Hoi Polloi (12 page)

The bible has turned me against horseracing itself. I wish I could forget about God. I love the racing, the bugle calling horses to canter to the barriers. The earthquake of hooves. When cheerers in the grandstand stomp and scream home the winner their guttural madness thrills me. I scream and stomp with them until breathless and emptied out. I stand close to the horses as they jig-jog to be hosed down, their ribs heaving, skin foaming and covered in a net of fat veins. They shake their bodies like a wet dog and sweat-foam sprays onto me and smells like freshly turned soil. So does the snot from their snorting. I wish I could forget about God, but that can’t be. For these are God’s animal athletes and look at what is being done to them. Their tongues are black-purple and bleeding because a length of women’s pantyhose has been used to tie them to their jaws like a tourniquet. Why do they do that? I ask Winks. Because jockeys lose control of horses whose tongues work up over the bit, that’s why, he says. The cap-gun whipping infuriates me. Those wizen-faced child-men have no right to hit God’s athletes. Someone must stop them grinding their spurs along the horses’ flanks. Winks knows the jockeys, the trainers. He can do something. I’ll find him this minute and tell him to do something and do it now.

The Members Bar. Race Five. Time of the day when men take women by the waist. Not to dance but to rub their hollows and see how long they’re allowed to keep their hand there. The women are much younger than the men. They teeter on heel-spikes and glance about for who is and isn’t looking at them. Their dresses are yellow, pink, powder-blue, and hang like singlets from their narrow, brown shoulders. Their brown backs are exposed. They’re not wearing bras though some have a white skin stripe where a bra would be. All but the tips of their breasts show. The shapes of their nipples point through.

Drink must have made the men forget who they are. Surely in a minute they’ll remember they have hairs sprouting on their ears and noses. They have holes of old blackheads there too. Each hole contains a bubble of perspiration. How ugly they must seem to these beautiful women! Yet they’re allowed to keep their crinkly hands where they do, rubbing up and down, then resting, rubbing up and down, then resting. The men try to squeeze the women closer to them, and the women eventually give in with giggling and granny-steps. The men wear gold wedding rings but these are not their wives. Their wives are as old as Heels and don’t come to the races, or if they do they spend the day at the Ladies Lunch by invitation of the race club Chairman as Heels is doing now.

But
these
women—how much older are they than me? Only ten years older, maybe nine. They allow the men to lower their hands and stroke a buttock quickly before returning to the waist. The men whisper into their ears and the women laugh. They call the women “girlie” and ask them their names—Nicola and Angela, Mandy, Caroline, Meg— but keep calling them girlie as if they weren’t listening to the answer. Some of these women are the same girlies as last weekend. Some Saturdays there are new Nicolas, Angelas, Mandys, Carolines, Megs sipping through straws such drinks that lemon peels stick out of in the shape of wings. They smirk at each other. Sometimes one will roll her eyes when the man she’s with isn’t looking. They take off their beekeeper hats with gauze veils by drawing out a long pin like string. Once the hat’s detached they place it on a stool behind them and shake their long hair down. The men inhale deeply and say, “I smell apples. You use apples for shampoo?”

The men forget to keep their voices low. Ears are flapping. My ears are flapping as I push past looking for Winks. They probably think I’m too young to understand. But I understand. I understand there’d be a scene if their wives knew what they were saying, I know that. Not the business talk so much—how they import kitchenware or diagnostic equipment for a living, or how they’re in the law and have been offered a position on the bench, following up with “asked to be a judge” when met with a blank look from their girlie— but where that kind of talk leads. It leads to money talk—how their turnover has reached two million a year, how money can buy racehorses, cars, holiday houses, but can’t buy happiness. How they and their wife don’t talk anymore. How they’ve become distant over the years, have grown apart, theirs is a marriage in name only. This is the kind of talk Winks scoffs at with a dismissive hand-wave as “piss-talk” and “the John Thomas talking” and “old men making fools of themselves”.

The men tell the girlies they’re going on a trip somewhere, to Hawaii, next month to chew over their lives. “Have you ever been to Hawaii?” they ask the girlies.

“No,” the girlies answer.

“Wonderful place. Sensational weather. The beach—you just do nothing all day.”

“Fingers crossed I’ll get there some time.”

“You should come along and keep me company.”

“How on earth can I afford Hawaii!”

“I tell you what. Albert McKenna—lovely fellow Albert— he’s got a good horse in the next race. Today’s the day its foot’s supposed to be on the till. How about I back it and if it wins then that’s your plane ticket to Hawaii?”

I can hear Winks’ raspy laughing. I stand on tip-toes. He’s over there, his slicked black hair with fifty-seven greys nodding and tossing back in good humour. He must be having a good day, a winning day. I shuffle sideways between hips and elbows. He’s drinking in a group of five: three women, a man I don’t know and him. The man I don’t know is leaning on the edge of a stool in a way that lets him cross one ankle against the other as he stands. The woman he’s with is seated on the stool. He speaks to her an inch away from her ear then cranes to the left at the end of each sentence to look her in the face and smile. She cradles her glass of champagne which has a strawberry floating in the fizz and smiles back at him. The other two women stand on either side of Winks. If this wasn’t Winks I’d swear they were girlies. They have those singlet dresses and hollows the girlies have. One of them is resting a hand on Winks’ shoulder and using her fingertips to comb her hair from her eyes. “Wow,” she responds to what he’s telling her. The other woman says “Fantastic” and touches his shirt cuff. He’s lying that he sold the Heritage Hotel for two million dollars.

“Two million dollars. I didn’t think there’d be two million dollars in the whole of New Zealand let alone for one little hotel,” the girlie who is leaning on his shoulder says.

“It wasn’t that little,” Winks laughs.

“Two million dollars. Gee. What’s it like to be a multimillionaire?”

“It’s no big deal,” he shrugs, beaming and swallowing his Adam’s apple. He’s peeping down her front and trying to disguise it from her by blinking quickly. She’s following his eye-line down to her breast ends, up, down, up. She clearly doesn’t mind him looking there. She breathes deeper to make her breasts puff out. She and the girlie on the other side of him nuzzle against his arms as a signal for him to put his arm around both of them, which he does. He begins to rub the hollows of their backs. Down, down, across the bum of the shoulder girlie. Back to the hollow, down to one buttock then across the other, then back up.

“Dad,” I say through clenched teeth, pulling on his sleeve, pulling his hand away from the shoulder girlie’s hollow. “Dad. Come here,” I demand, barely audible, seething. He drops his hands to his sides and turns. “Oh,” he chuckles awkwardly. “How are you?” He explains to the girlies that I’m his son. I don’t look at him or them. I stare at the floor and step backward, turn and walk away a few strides and stop as a sign for Winks to follow. I stand still, fists clenched in my pockets. He pats me on the arm then puts his hands in his pockets too, leaning forward on his toes as if to speak confidentially. I glance at his face and see that there is a look in it I have never seen in Winks before. It’s a look I’m certain is fear. A red fear in his cheeks. A white fear in his wide-eyed eyes. His bottom lip trembles. He’s trying to hold open a smile that he does not mean. His breathing is quick and beery. “How you going?” he asks. “What can I do for you?”

I don’t reply. I refuse to look at him.

“What do you want?” No reply from me. “Say something.”

He lifts my chin on his fingertips but I keep my eyes focus ed anywhere but on him. I jerk my chin free of his touch.

“What’s this about?” he asks, frowning. No reply. “What’s all this silent treatment about?” He attempts to lift my chin again but I brace to keep my chin where it is. “What sort of antic is this?” he wants to know. “I hope you weren’t standing there checking on me, were you?” His voice has become lower, quieter, threatening. “Were you?”

I shake my head, No, and barely parting my lips say I wanted him to stop the whipping of the horses and the tying of their tongues down and kicking them with spurs.

Winks lets out a grunt through his nose. “Jesus son. Don’t you think you’re taking this religious stuff a bit bloody far?” He brushes my chin playfully with his knuckles. “Listen, old pal. I hope you don’t think I was slinging my hook here. Ay? Is that what this is about sour-puss? You think I was slinging my hook?” I remain clenched in silence. “Well you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there. Too much imagination,” he says, tapping his finger on my crown. “I hope you’re not going to run off and say that to your mother, that I was slinging my hook. Ay?”

He tells me to listen carefully to him:
they’re
just a couple of girlies trying it on. He reckons I should be proud my old man can still pull the birds. It’s flattering. I wouldn’t begrudge my old man that, would I? He tells me to come on, take that scowl off my face. We men have got to look after each other, keep this sort of business to ourselves. He promises he’ll do what he can to raise the matter of the whipping and the tongues and spurs but I know he’s just saying that. He winks and says word is Alarm Bells is a cert in the next. Here’s a fiver. Go have a bet on Alarm Bells with Uncle Chicka. Buy a pie and a can of soft drink and have a bet. Alarm Bells, number six.

He makes me take a hand out of my pocket and tucks the money into my fist. He takes me by the arm and urges me to go on my way. He gives me a gentle push to make my legs work. I look over my shoulder at him and squeeze between drinkers. He smiles and salutes one finger onto his brow. He salutes again as I pause and watch him. The girlies stare at me, expressionless. They’re bored waiting for Winks to rejoin them, which he does now, reaching over to the bar for his beer. The shoulder girlie arches her hand to his shoulder. He peers to see where I am in the bar. He’s lost sight of me as I weave and bob. And now I’ve lost sight of him and am glad of that. I don’t want to see again his hand in the girlies’ hollows and across their buttocks.

Will he be asking them to go to Hawaii? Will he be saying he and Heels don’t talk anymore? That would be the John Thomas talking, for they talk all right. They talk about how the hotel business is the only business they know. They talk about whether to buy a pub they’ve seen in Kirri-billi, such a classy area, such a classy clientele, not a hori in sight. But will my phone box problem come back to haunt them?

They argue my faults never came from
their
side of the family. They talk about how Sydney High School is a selective school. They wish I was smart enough to get into such a school when exams are held later in the year. Wouldn’t that be a coup. That would be a feather in their cap to have a son good enough for such a school. It would save them oodles of dollars. There is no indication I am in that league. That’s the big league. If I were a racehorse they’d judge me to be something of a plodder. Not a Group One contender at all. “He must take after your side of the family,” mutters Heels. Then she blames Heritage, its go-nowhere schools. Money will have to be put aside for one of those schools with grand English-sound ing names, for Kings or Knox. For Cranbrook or Shore.

If she knew what was happening in the Members Bar between Winks and the girlies, if I told her what was happening, there’d be talk all right. There’d be yelling-talk, I bet. There’d be sucking and scratching the air talk from her. Pleading and sorry talk from him. There’d be “I’m going for a walk around the block” talk from him while she cries until he closes the door behind him. She’d have a glass of wine and talk to herself bitterly about
men
then cry on cue the moment she hears his key in the lock, and keep crying into her hankie until he insists on taking her out to dinner and she says No a few times before saying Yes and going into the bathroom to re-do her face.

Their marriage might end if she knew what was happening in the Members Bar. He’d leave to wherever he’d leave to, and I’d stay with Heels and her hairspray and hatreds until a new man comes on the scene, a father who’s not my father, and me a son who is not his son.

I won’t tell her about the Members Bar. But this five dollars. I’ve been told to keep quiet for five dollars. I’m worth more than that little sum. I must give the money back to Winks. That will be his punishment: I will refuse to play the game and take part in any man-to-man understanding.

There he is, still rubbing the girlies’ hollows. He’s laughing into their ears and whispering. They flick back their hair to remove any obstruction to his laughing and whispering. “Dad.” I tug his sleeve. “Here’s your five dollars.” He drops his hands to his sides. That look is back on his face: the red fear, the white fear, the trying-to smile. I jam the money into his fingers and hurry away through the drinkers before he tries to charm me with his “You wouldn’t tell on your old man, would you? Come on, son. You wouldn’t deny your old man some fun.”

I sit on the very top seat of the Members grandstand, Ferris-wheel high. For three hours, four hours, I sit there until the insect people below begin to leave the course and the sky, swimming-pool blue all day, begins to dim for evening. The loudspeaker calls for me to make myself known to the nearest policeman because my parents are worried. It calls again and again but I’m making Winks wait. I’m letting him fret on what has become of me. Let him fret on what trouble I may cause him.

The whitecoat who mans the glass doors behind me taps me on the shoulder and asks if I’m me, the boy they’re calling for on the loudspeaker. He asks if I’m deaf or something and if I’m going to be a nice fellow and come with him to the police.