Hoi Polloi (18 page)

“The poor end,” Winks jokes, standing in front of the fan with his singlet lifted up. “The bloody hot end.”

“The developing end,” she corrects again.

“The Jew end. Little Israel,” he says smiling into a laugh.

“Don’t say such things. You’ll put us off the place.”

“What a funny lot those Jews are,” Winks continues. He takes an imaginary handful of money bills from his pocket and, chuckling as he speaks, tells of Mr Cohen upstairs on the top floor, the Mr Cohen who built the apartment block we’re living in and whom we owe a dollar or two in cash— “under the table money” which Winks explains is a system people use when they give you a little discount for buying things, in our case this apartment.

“I hear about these Jews,” he says. “And by Christ what I hear is true. The other day when I handed the money over …” Winks licks his thumb and slowly counts the imaginary bills, one hundred, two hundred, three, in an accent that transforms “when” to “Ven” and “the” to “ze” as he explains that ven Mr Cohen counted ze money he never counted ze last bill in ze wad. “‘Why didn’t you count it, Mr Cohen?’ I asked him. And do you know what he replied? He replied, ‘Never count ze last bill in case underneaz it zere is an extra bill zat has accidentally been given you which you get to keep for free if it’s not exposed.’”

Winks slaps his thigh and cackles. “If it’s not exposed,” he repeats, and repeats once more.

Heels’ eyes are closed with laughing. Tears gather at their corners. “That’d be right,” she sighs as her laughter subsides. “They understand the value of a dollar, I’ll say that much for them.”

Winks’ laughing peters out to sighs and one more “if it’s not exposed.”

“You were in his house?” I ask. Mr Cohen with his olive, Greek-like skin and black mini-cap on his crown? “Would he be welcome in our place?”

“Of course. As long as he didn’t try and convert us.”

Winks’ laughter sparks up again. And Heels’.

“Convert us to what?” I ask.

“To his kind,” says Heels.

“What’s his kind?”

She pinches the top of her nose, dreading having to make an explanation. “Oh I don’t know. They don’t believe in Jesus or something. Frankly, I’m not interested in explaining it.”

Winks chips in with, “They were on our side in the war. They’re grateful to us. That helps us get along.”

“Why do they wear those little caps of theirs?” I ask.

“Oh I don’t know. Something to do with their religion.

Let’s change the subject for goodness’ sake,” Heels replies.

“How come Mr Cohen would be allowed through our door but Stephen Papadopoulos or Jonathan Jonathan wouldn’t be?”

She groans: “Oh for Heaven’s sake.” She says the reason has to do with the Mr Cohens of this world are like us. They understand the value of a dollar. That deserves respect.

Winks slaps his thigh again. “They like trying it on, I’ll say that much for them. ‘If it’s not exposed.’”

“That deserves respect. They’ve got some get up and go those people.”

The right sort of school will be the one Heels refers to as the “Mansions” at Bellevue Hill. There are only boys at the Mansions, no distractions of girls. How very grand it is, on a grand green hill with a view no one could ever afford to buy unless they had millions, she swoons. Look at that big liner coming through the Heads—a toy boat from this far. You’d swear the water was made of glass. It’s not like a school at all but a castle with a cricket field, trimmed garden edges, over-alled men who sweep up leaves. Everywhere you look in every direction there’s a very old mansion like in England. “Do you know what it is?” she says. “It’s a direct promotion to the hoi polloi. I bet you that’s Latin over the entrance. It’s like we were in England, right down to you having to wear a boater.”

The following code of behaviour is for my benefit. (It’s my first day at school. I’m standing in a line of boys on the quadrangle.) My hair: keep it above the collar and above the ears at all times, but no crew-cuts. I must keep my shoes free of scuff-marks. I’m to attend to that myself, not a parent, nanny or maid. The school sergeant inspects the line-up of us all. He stops to blink in my face as if taking a mental photograph. He is very short, a grey-haired old man whose back is so straight it mustn’t have shoulder blades, for none form a shape through his clothes. He wears a blue uniform with a strip of colours across his chest like a medal ribbon, like a policeman. A pretend policeman. A policeman of boys. I am to keep my socks held up with elastics and wear my straw boater at all times when outside the school grounds.

I will be expected to wear a kilt on Fridays for cadets which is a kind of schoolboy army. There will be a morning sing along with Colonel Morse who will mount the assembly hall stage in his starched army khakis and shiny Sam Browne belt and lead us through
The Road to Mandalay
and
Pack Up
Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag
in our loudest voices. There will be chapel on Thursday morning where collection plates will be handed round and the money goes to Africa. I can expect to hear John Lennon’s
Imagine
because it’s more relevant than the old hymns. Any boy who puts an IOU in the plate as happened last week will be caned severely. I will be expected to barrack wholeheartedly for my school at sports events, particularly First XV rugby games, especially home games. And the Head of the River rowing regatta. Supremacy on the water reflects supremacy of the school in general, and the supremacy of the school reflects the supremacy of this tribe of “us”. Dismissed.

The definition of “us” seems to be that we are Protestants. There are various tribes within the tribe that’s us, but Protestant appears to be the unifying definition. Catholic boys from the Christian Brothers schools or the other Catholic schools are “the other”. They’re “Tykes”.

We, our tribe, us, are mainly drawn from the eastern suburbs: from Paddington to Point Piper. Bellevue Hill itself or Vaucluse, Rose Bay. Or else we are boarders from the country, the bush, with its sheep and cattle stations, its flat brown plains of wheat. These boys have deep sunken eyes that always seem to be in a squint. They have a profusion of freckles and red-tinged hair as if one family bred them all. They keep to themselves this bush tribe and talk about the weather, how there’s no rain back home, how the dams are at their lowest level ever. Their speech is a nasal drawl that hardly parts their lips. In their wallets they keep photographs of a favourite kelpie or their father’s truck. Though they come from out west do not confuse them with
Westies.
Westies are from the city-west, the factory-west where men work with their hands and not their brains as our fathers are presumed to do even if they’re farmers, bush tribers.

Rob Bennett lives in the city-west. He certainly isn’t a Westie. His father’s a doctor so he’s just fine. To be a doctor is the best you can aim to be. The next best is a barrister, the next a solicitor. The best after that is a merchant banker or dentist. The next would be an architect, air-force pilot or army officer, and so on down the list. Which of these professions do you want to enter? asks Rob Bennett. I couldn’t say for sure. Which of these professions does your father fit into? he wants to know. None? What does he do? A liquor store? Oh. Does that qualify him as a businessman? I suppose so. That’s all right then, he says. A businessman is something.

Mr Cohen has a tattoo, pale blue numbers and rough as handwriting on the inside of his forearm. But Mr Cohen is no hori. Mrs Burns has one too and she is clean, neat and wealthy. Her neck is draped in so many chains they form a gold spiderweb on her skin. Gold bangles are stacked up her wrist like quoits. She has so many rings on one finger they make the finger swell as if the blood has been cut off. “How come your mother has a tattoo?” I ask Richard Burns the day his mother works in the tuckshop.

“Why do you think?” he rolls his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“I really don’t know.”

“The Holocaust,” he whispers.

He does not whisper out of reverence for the Holocaust or his mother who survived it. It’s because this kind of talk, Jew talk, can bring a Jew trouble in the quadrangle, in the corridors. There is an Asian tribe at school whose people are sometimes called “slant eyes” or “monkeys”. A Jew who brings attention to himself can suffer more than name-calling. Gary Blackwood from the bush tribe will put his hand up to his nose and mime an elephant’s trunk and honk “Jewball. Jew-balls are everywhere these days.” With Richard Burns he targets his un-Jewish name. “Change your name to one of ours all you like but you’re still a Jewball. Hitler was right. If he’d have killed all of you people you wouldn’t run the banks and farmers would be better off not having to answer to fuck-ing Jewballs.”

Gary Blackwood will punch Richard Burns’s arm. He will wrench him in a headlock, knee him in the thigh to make a cork. He will force him to say out loud, “I’m a dirty fat Jewball. Hitler was right.” The bush tribe laughs and slaps Gary Blackwood on the back as a congratulation.

Richard Burns doesn’t cry when this happens to him. He braces himself in quiet fury, in pain. He doesn’t fight back. He is too scared to fight back. He is a first year, a pleb. He is smaller, younger, weaker than Gary Blackwood and has endured one humiliation from him, why risk another by fighting back? He waits for the corking and laughing, the pain, the fury to pass from him like a funny turn, a sickness. I know not to go near him to comfort him in case I’m labelled a Jew-lover, an enemy of Gary Blackwood. Nor does any member of the Jew tribe dare catch the eye of a bush triber or else they will be next.

A prefect comes by. I know it’s a prefect by his woollen blue-green tie. He blames Richard Burns for the fighting and warns him, “Next time I’ll send you to the school sergeant.” The prefect jokes to Gary Blackwood that he should save his knuckles for the regatta.

The fifty-dollar tribe is the wealthiest of all. At the tuckshop fifty-dollar tribe people buy a chocolate milk with a fifty-dollar note. The ladies behind the counter have trouble find-ing change. This tribe’s fathers drive them to school in Rolls Royces, Mercedes, Jags. They have pools in their homes though they’d never invite me because their friends have been their best friends since prep school. One day they will invite me perhaps, if I’m persistent. If when the fifty-dollar tribe speaks of Whitlam and his Labor government I agree that they are shaping as a disaster they might invite me. Yes Whitlam is out of control. Yes he is trying to destroy business and the free enterprise system with taxes and union thugs. Yes my parents are seriously considering leaving the country for America or Switzerland as their parents are. Whitlam is out to destroy private schools, the fifty-dollar tribe complain. Where else would people like us go to school? Whitlam wants to ban cadets is the latest word.

Whitlam is a disaster, I agree with them, though I have little understanding of politics. “Your politics is your pocket,” I exclaim, nodding decisively. It’s what Heels and Winks say if ever the topic of politics is raised.

“Your politics is your pocket,” the fifty-dollar tribe repeats. “That’s a good way of putting it.” What does your father do? one of them asks—Justin Boyce-Harrow. Whitlam wants to stop his father mining in the outback—“I mean it’s a desert out there. What else are you going to do with a desert?” He denounces Whitlam as nothing but a socialist: “He’ll have us all wearing grass skirts with the Abos.”