‘Fat Susan, as you refer to her fifty years later, was my closest friend. She did have a weight problem, and it wasn’t helped by her being called Fat Susan. In her thirties she went on a crazy diet and started doing triathlons. She had a heart attack. At thirty-six. All of which, I guess, is as much an outcome of childhood trauma as your career.’

  Shit. ‘I’m so sorry. Did…’

  ‘No, she didn’t die. I talked to her on the phone for about an hour last night. But she was never in Mrs Crick’s class.’

  There are things you remember, and things you know. Without the latter, where are your foundations? And this I know: Susan shopped Smithy to Mrs Crick. I can see her, sitting next to Pamela. I can see her standing up, dobbing Smithy in; I can see her bawling her apology. Like it was yesterday. Susan was in Mrs Crick’s class.

  I am not surprised Maddie has got it wrong. I only remember because of what happened to Smithy.

  ‘I’ll grant you your interpretations. And I’m sorry about the Fat Susan thing. But—’

  ‘Relax. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’m just pointing out the fallibility of memory. You must get it in your work all the time.’

  ‘I do. But it’s mainly clients who have a good reason to forget.’ Mainly. Once or twice I have gone looking for a pithy phrase that I remember from a judgment and found it’s not there. It’s disconcerting, but…I can see Susan.

  ‘She skipped Standard One,’ says Maddie. ‘We didn’t meet till Standard Two.’

  I pull out my phone.

  ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘Try the wine.’

  ‘You think you might be wrong?’

  ‘Like I said, the only story that matters is the one you tell now.’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

  The class photo is not on the website. I go to the 1960s alumni list and start checking the ‘memories’ postings. I know I am being antisocial but I want to put it to bed.

  Eventually, Maddie gets out her own phone and we spend the rest of the meal surfing the web for evidence. I pick up the bill and we go our separate ways.

  I have a friend—had a friend—a confirmed atheist, who was in a near-fatal motorbike accident. As he lay semiconscious, he felt Jesus take his hand. And has been a believer ever since. No amount of logical argument will shake the human instinct to privilege personal experience over evidence.

  Even after Maddie texted me a photo of Standard One, 1963, with no sign of Susan, and a second of the class below us, with Susan unmistakable in the front row, I did not believe it.

  Behind most bad decisions lies anger. My client had every reason to be angry with the institution that had abused him as a child, and with the courts that had declined to convict the perpetrator. Against my professional advice, he had pursued the matter as a civil claim for damages, where the burden of proof was less onerous, and I had negotiated a path around the statute of limitations.

  I believed his story. Even the judge, I’m sure, had believed it. My primary-school experiences of corporal punishment faded into something akin to first-world problems in the light of what had been visited upon Francis Spence. If, as Maddie Perfect would have it, anger had driven me to my chosen profession, then he had more than enough motivation to pursue his grievance to the end of his finances. And it gave me some personal satisfaction to take on a school that had failed to protect its students.

  But now, in the face of substantial legal costs, I had talked some sense into Mr Spence. He would settle for a public apology and a sum for damages that would be more attractive to both parties than pursuing the matter in court. I was confident our offer would be accepted, give or take a detail or two, and arranged to meet with the lawyers for the notoriously wealthy private school. The perpetrator had since died, and the school would doubtless deflect as much of the blame as possible onto him.

  I had met a few times with Emily Burfoot, who represented the school, at a cafe located between our offices. This time, as I sat with my espresso, a short, overweight man in a very good suit walked up to my table, pulled back a chair and sat down.

  ‘Sorry, Emily’s on leave.’ He stuck his hand out and articulated his name as though it meant something. ‘Bob Smith.’

  He shook my hand firmly and slowly, looked into my eyes and let the words sink in. They made no impression. He had to add, ‘We were at Te Paka Primary School for a year together. Perhaps you don’t remember.’

  ‘Jesus. Smithy.’

  He laughed, dryly. ‘No one’s called me that since 1963. And I’m not giving you permission to start again now. It’s Bob to you.’ He grinned. ‘Or Wobert.’

  I could feel a memory beginning its long journey towards my consciousness, heralded by a vague sense of unease. Since the dinner in Wellington, I had reached an accommodation with the evidence that Fat Susan could have played no role in the events of 1963. Maddie had said that she did not remember the boys; similarly I found I could recall just three or four of the girls, and those only because they had continued to intermediate school with me. Susan had stood out because of her weight and associated moniker. My mind had apparently attached an image of her to whichever unmemorable girl had actually done the deed. There was only one person likely to be able to recall her name now, and he was sitting opposite me.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ I said.

  His expression indicated he had not missed the implication. ‘If you’re using 1963 as your baseline, you’d be right. It was a pretty ugly year. My mother had cancer…You want to get business out of the way before we talk about the good old days?’

  ‘Let’s do that.’

  ‘It won’t take long. My client’s instructions are not to settle. The teacher didn’t do it and they think it would be morally indefensible to besmirch his good name. Needless to say, an apology’s out of the question.’

  ‘If they’re hoping to scare my client away, I have to say they’re wrong. He’s adamant…’

  Smithy leaned back in the chair, hands behind his head. I could not see anything of the small barefooted boy of six or seven. The freckles had gone. So had the sandy hair. There was just the short stature. ‘Of course he’s adamant. I imagine he genuinely believes it happened. And that this specific teacher was the perpetrator. How old was he?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘That was the last incident. He’s not even sure about that one. Seven.’

  ‘I’m not going to convince him he’s mistaken.’ Any more than I was going to persuade my friend that he had not seen Jesus.

  Smithy smiled. ‘You’d have to trust the memory of adults ahead of a seven-year-old.’

  I smiled back. He was not being serious. ‘Except for minor matters of honesty and jeopardy. The eight-year-old had no reason to lie.’

  He gave me a long, searching look, and must have concluded that I was not hiding anything. ‘Well, then, that’s that. We’ve both done our best. If people want to spend their money on lawyers against their best advice, we’re obliged to take it.’ He must have seen my expression, my involuntary shake of the head. ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing. It just sits oddly with my memories of you, to see you on the side of institutional power.’

  He laughed, loudly enough that people looked, but it was forced. ‘And you? You don’t think it’s a bit odd for you to be defending the victim—the alleged victim?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m over it. You’re probably part of the reason I’m here today, in this job, so in some perverse way I owe you.’

  ‘You lost me at “perverse”.’

  ‘You don’t remember? All right, that is disappointing. You don’t remember the day Raewyn forgot her lunch?’

  ‘Like it was yesterday.’

  ‘Well, good then. I’m not a vengeful sort of guy, not anymore. I’m just interested. As a student of human idiocy. What motivated you? Some sort of brownie point? Teacher’s pet? You didn’t have to put your hand up.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  Smithy affected a squeaky child’s voice. ‘I saw Smithy stealing Waewyn’s lunch.’ He expelled a long breath through pursed lips. Then he smiled, broadly.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it when Raewyn’s mum came into class and you got three on the hand from Mrs Crick. And wetting yourself in front of the class.’

  Published in Review of Australian Fiction, vol. 13, no. 2, 2015.

  The Life and Times of Greasy Joe

  Dicko had got a job and left home. He had a flat-warming party the following Friday, and that was the first time I met Greasy Joe. Keith had brought a girl along—I’m pretty sure it was a first date—and this little Italian-looking guy a couple of years older in a brown suit lines her up and won’t leave her alone. He’s getting her drinks and generally acting in a pseudo-sophisticated way that none of us would have stooped to—or known how to do anyway. He spoke like Yogi Bear. ‘Pic-a-nic basket, Boo Boo. Spark-a-ling wine for the lay-dee.’

  He didn’t get anywhere with Keith’s date, but nor did Keith, thanks to this guy monopolising her. Next time we went to Dicko’s he was there again. He was the flatmate. In fact, he had the lease. He literally went with the territory.

  It was Keith who dubbed him Greasy Joe, more because of his sleazy behaviour than his olive skin. He wasn’t happy with the name. He never got aggressive about it but was constantly suggesting alternatives: Rock; Eddie the Gun, after the snooker player Eddie Charlton; Joe Cool. All reasonably positive names, and therefore not particularly appealing. If we had known Rock Hudson was gay, we might have gone with Rock.

  The availability of Dicko’s flat heralded a new kind of freedom and, we liked to think, growth in our lives, centred on alcohol, cars and the possibility of sex. We didn’t entirely eschew intellectual pursuits: most of us were applying ourselves to university studies with varying degrees of diligence. But, short of the occasional philosophical conversation, few would have guessed that we were future doctors, lawyers and captains of industry. Or indeed functioning adults. That period of youthful irresponsibility coincided, to the day, with the time I knew Greasy Joe.

  Greasy Joe had a Fiat X1/9 sports car, a two-seater with a roof you could take off and stow under the bonnet. A targa top, not even a proper convertible. He refused to wear a seatbelt because it creased his suit. We gave him a hard time about that car. For the price he could have had a panel van with a bed and a bar, which would have made sense, considering his ambitions. The Fiat supposedly attracted a better class of girl. We never saw any evidence of it.

  Greasy Joe had a theory that if a girl smoked, she had a similarly reckless attitude to sex. In the days when smoking was permitted pretty much everywhere, he wouldn’t waste his time on a non-smoker. If he thought it would improve his chances, he’d smoke himself, but he didn’t inhale. We would go out in jeans and T-shirts and Greasy Joe would be wearing a three-piece suit with pointed shoes and tie. He was no more than five-six, with prematurely receding hair and a big nose. But he was focused.

  One night we’re at Dicko’s flat, maybe nine or ten of us, including this guy we called Sciavanni, which was rumoured to be an Italian word for an indecent act. It’s about three in the morning, and Sciavanni gets a call from a girl in Castlemaine and there’s a party on—half a dozen girls—all smokers, by the sound of it. We decide to go, and Sciavanni had a van that he’d done up. It was scarily fast, but at anything over a hundred and twenty kays you had to drive it down the white line to keep from running off the road.

  Greasy Joe had his little two seater, and he’s falling around drunk, and was a crap driver at the best of times. We didn’t try to stop him—it was the seventies—but no one wanted to go with him and he wouldn’t let anyone else drive his car. So four of us get in my car—Dicko and Slack Mac and Keith—and a couple of guys I didn’t really know get in with Sciavanni.

  Greasy Joe says head for Ballarat, then follow the signs to Castlemaine. Sciavanni and I get to Ballarat, but we’ve lost Joe. Eventually we work out that we should have gone towards Bendigo, not Ballarat, but we find the back road to Castlemaine, and Sciavanni says, ‘Race you.’ The guys in Sciavanni’s van are scared witless, so they get in my car—four in the back—and I say just don’t anybody chuck. Nothing on the road at 5 a.m., and we go first and never see Sciavanni till we get to Castlemaine. I’m pretty pleased with myself.

  We find the address and there’s Greasy Joe’s little green Fiat outside. The sun’s up and he lets us in, says make breakfast—the other girls have gone home. And there’s this woman of about thirty-five in a bathrobe. Smoking.

  We wait for Sciavanni, and eventually a truck drops him off and he’s carrying a schoolbag with his number plates. Driving into the sun, he’d missed a bend.

  One time, I’m driving with Greasy Joe sitting in the front, and I have to stop for him to throw up. He’s so drunk, he says to me, ‘Don’t tell the boys, don’t tell ’em Eddie the Gun chucked—they respect me.’ And the boys, Slack Mac and Keith, are in the back seat, listening to him, quietly pissing themselves laughing.

  He had, supposedly, a whole circle of friends we never met, all of them legends. Not sporting legends or winners against the odds, just prodigious drinkers and sexual athletes, in a white-collar sort of way. Chief among them was Moth the Dentist. Moth was short for Timothy. I wondered if anyone other than Greasy Joe called him that. None of our direct circle were qualified professionals, more because of age than anything else, and perhaps Moth should have had our admiration for better reasons than engaging in a public ménage à trois at a dentists’ convention. Dentists’ conventions, Greasy Joe assured us, represented the very depths of debauchery.

  Greasy Joe played cricket, I assumed at a fairly low social level. But in his whites, he looked totally the part. He was embarrassed when we caught him heading out one morning after we’d all crashed at the flat, and never spoke about his cricketing associates. Presumably they lived less exciting lives than dentists. I wondered if there might be some Indian or Sri Lankan mixed up with the Italian. If there was any Italian at all.

  One night at a party I went outside with my drink and Greasy Joe was sitting on the grass, in his suit, with a girl I hadn’t seen before. She was quite young, sixteen if she was lucky. They didn’t see me and I hung around to hear him in action.

  ‘Everybody thinks accountant is the top job in a bank. But the guys who have the real power are the auditors. The men with the green pens. They’re inside the system and outside it at the same time. No one else is allowed to even own a green pen.’

  He sucked at his cigarette and blew the smoke straight back. ‘One day, I’m going to be the man with the green pen. Just walk into a branch, pull the pen out of my pocket…’

  Sweet Little Sixteen was looking pretty vacant. But I hadn’t known he had a dream.

  He never had a proper girlfriend. It was a pretty poor result for all the effort he put in, dressing up in the suit to go to the pub, approaching strangers, getting rebuffed, finally finding someone who’d let him buy her a drink, hanging on like a leech all night and then not even getting her phone number. And pretty obviously, since the whole thing took place in public, he wasn’t getting anything back except conversation. Afterwards, he’d deny any interest. ‘I was just talking to the nice lady.’

  Most of us were still at uni and living at home with our parents. Dicko’s flat was the meeting place and there was something going on there most nights. If there were no girls, Greasy Joe would go to bed early, but Dicko was always sitting up drinking, so much so that he lost his job. We found out later that Joe let him stay for nothing until he got another job. It didn’t happen in Joe’s lifetime.

  After I graduated, Greasy Joe became a bigger part of my life. The job market was tight for first-timers with a geology degree who had missed the minerals boom. Thanks to Joe’s friends in high places—people who did not want to antagonise a man who might one day wield the green pen—I was granted an interview for an entry-level position.

  So I became a batch clerk, a few steps down the pecking order from Greasy Joe, who was second teller with his sights fixed on the number-one position. He made me promise never to make reference to his nickname or his second life as a drinker, seducer and associate of dentists. A second teller, let alone a first teller, was expected to exemplify the highest standards of the banking profession. He wore the brown suit every day.

  At work, Greasy Joe was diligent, bordering on obsequious. The first teller took a week off around Easter, and there was no relieving officer available to cover the position. Joe cancelled his own leave and stepped up to the plate. It was a long week. His competence was never in doubt, but he made sure we did not forget for a moment the huge responsibility he had taken on. Transactions were conducted with gravitas. The issuing of a book of traveller’s cheques might as well have been the bailout of a mid-sized economy.

  We had a social cricket match—just a drink and a hit-out—with the guys from another branch before the Christmas break. It was a chaotic affair, and Joe did not bat or bowl. I encouraged him to have a go, but he conveyed a view that it was beneath him. He didn’t have his whites. Lucky, because he would have looked a right ponce among the rest of us, who had packed shorts and jeans. But he’s standing, fielding, when this burly guy batting has a big slash, and the ball streaks like a rocket past Joe to his left. Except that it doesn’t. He dives, flings his hand out, and it sticks. He gets up, looking embarrassed to have lost his dignity. Second tellers don’t dive. We’re all gobsmacked.

  A girl I knew from uni, who I’d always been interested in but thought was a bit upmarket, came into the bank one day when I was relieving at one of the teller stations. I got her number, but when I rang and asked her out to dinner, she asked if she could bring her girlfriend. ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring a friend too.’

  Funnily enough, Joe was my first choice. He would dress properly and behave with some sort of civility. Better than Dicko, who would get drunk, or Slack Mac, who would forget to turn up or leave his wallet at home.

 

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