Hoi Polloi (19 page)

“My father’s a businessman,” I answer.

There is a murmur of approval as if I have provided the right password. “What line is he in?”

“Liquor,” I reply.

“He might deal with my father,” says Justin Boyce-Harrow. “My father has brewery interests. So tell me, does your father own a brewery?”

“He’s in all sorts of things.”

“In a big way?”

“Oh yes,” I say, attempting to sound as proud and superior as Boyce-Harrow.

Another of the fifty-dollar tribe asks if I know the McWilliams people, the wine people. They have a boy who’s good enough to play rugby for Australia.

“Oh yes, of course,” I lie. “We see quite a lot of them.’’

I pretend to cough to fend off the interrogation.

Boyce-Harrow pats me between the shoulder blades to help my breathing and continues his questioning. “Where do you live?”

“Vaucluse,” I splutter, fending away his patting.

“Good,” says Boyce-Harrow. “Since you live in Vaucluse my father can drop you home after school some days if you like. Whereabouts in Vaucluse are you?”

I cough that I live in Kimberley Street.

Boyce-Harrow frowns, “Where’s that?” and asks if it’s anywhere near Wentworth Road.

I tell him not to worry about giving me a lift home, but he keeps asking where Kimberley Street is: is Kimberley Street that one that runs off Hopetoun Avenue? Is it down near Parsley Bay? Giving me a lift would be no bother at all, his father does it all the time for Vaucluse boys. The fact remains however that Boyce-Harrow can’t place Kimberley Street. He’s never heard of it and his family has lived in Vaucluse forever.

It’s the other side of the Vaucluse shopping centre, I say. Towards the Rose Bay end of Vaucluse.

That’s
not Vaucluse, scoffs Boyce-Harrow. It’s only Diamond Bay.

There are no more offers of lifts home. No more opportunities to denounce the Whitlam government. On the mornings Winks drives me to school I ask him to drop me a long way from the entrance gate, almost halfway down the road, the road of trees, the road of tree shadows and mansions. I explain to him it’s so I can get some exercise and start my heart pumping for the day but really it’s because I’m ashamed of the Torana among so many fine cars. In fact, from now on I’ll take the double-decker bus to school despite the way it bumps and rocks my cock to life so that I have to clench and pinch myself against a stiffie, against ejaculating. Despite having to tramp up the road, higher and higher into its gated hills and then up the steps steep as a ladder between mansions and past the mansion of the old man with no throat, the one who stands on his verandah, lifts up his cravat and blows through a hole in his neck as if clearing a blocked nose.

D
ON’T BE SO DOWN
on everything all the time. Get into the swing of things, Heels says. Give things a go, join in. If the regatta is
the
event of the school calendar then of course you must go, besides it sounds very glamorous, a regatta. It conjures images of very toffy English gentlemen with monocles and ladies with lacy parasols and pretty bonnets. “You’ll even be wearing a boater like you’re on one of those punting things, punts. A boater is the perfect hat for a regatta,” she trills in a sing-song voice, placing it, a thatch of scratchy straw, on my head and setting it square then straightening my tie, smoothing the suit pads of my shoulders. She takes a step back to look at me in my smart grey uniform before farewelling me out the door for the bus to the train station. No she does not know why the regatta is called Head of the River but if that is what it is called then that’s what it’s called. No need to make snide comments about beheadings and savages with spears. There are no savages with spears left in Australia, least of all on a river at or near Sydney.

But I’ve heard there is headhunting at the Head of the River. There are headhunters, not so much at the river itself but on the trains going there. It’s a secret, that’s the rule, that’s the tradition. Headhunting is a tradition that’s no business of teachers or parents or prefects or police. It’s between
us
and the other us’s of each school. No one dobs, and if they do, they’ll be history, they’ll be
got
.

The Jew tribe will not go to the Head of the River. If there’s trouble, won’t they be the first to attract it? Nor can I see anyone from the Asian tribe. Perhaps they fear they would be second.

Throughout Saturday morning the trains pull away from Town Hall Station for Penrith. Carriages crammed with boys and pimply almost-men blazered and scarved in the blues, browns, greys and blacks of their particular school. Each school has its own carriage. On the platform boys assemble excitedly, waiting for their turn to board. They queue, not commanded by anyone to do so—there are no masters, parents or prefects present—but out of some innate conformity.

Gary Blackwood’s at the front of my queue. He is jostling us with his elbows to “make room you fucking plebs” as members of the bush tribe arrive. Plebs must give up their place and move to the back of the queue. Carlos Toyne is there—a friend of Gary Blackwood’s though not a member of the bush tribe (his father’s a chemist at Bondi) but a weightlifter, rumoured to be good at maths all the same. His red scalp shows through his hair from early balding. His shoulders are so hunched with muscle they touch his earlobes. He takes off his blazer and rolls it into a ball for stowing under his arm. He folds up his sleeves into tight cuffs for his hairy biceps, biceps so thick he must hold them out from his body as if carrying bags. He walks a few steps out of our queue towards the neighbouring queue, Enemy One. He sucks in deep breaths through his nose as if preparing to lift a bell-bar. He bares his teeth at Enemy One and gives out a gargling growl, thumps his chest with his fists like an ape, growling louder, hoarser. Veins in his forehead and temples squiggle to life like worms. His eyes bulge in a madman’s glare.

The older boys in the Enemy One queue clap and jeer. They mock him with muscle-man poses struck with an effeminate flourish, a bent wrist, a blown kiss. This only makes Carlos Toyne beat his chest more ferociously and roar with strings of spit between his lips. The next Penrith-bound train grinds towards the platform. The school queues burst into song—their school songs—arms slung over the shoulders of the boys next to them. Gary Blackwood punches the air and leads the school anthem. Senior boys, the almost-men who reek of aftershave, those who usually push we plebs aside or to the ground as soon as look at us now fling their arms over our shoulders, hug us to their sides. Even the bush tribe embraces us and does not let us go as the train squeals to a halt. Gary Blackwood has his arm over me and is holding me close. “OK you fucking plebs, let’s see what you’re fuck-ing made of,” he yells. He jerks at the train door to slide it open. Carlos Toyne charges in to claim the empty carriage. The rest of us follow to fortify the carriage, locked in the chain of arms and shoulders unable to wriggle free of the crush. For that’s what Gary Blackwood is instructing us to do, “Fortify.” We are like his troops now, he is our self-appointed commander.

Carlos Toyne has won the first battle against Enemy One: he has opened our rear door, the one that leads to the Enemy One carriage door. He has reached across and grabbed the Enemy One carriage door-handle. On the other side, two Enemy One almost-men push against his hold, a test of strength Toyne is winning single-handedly. Whoever wins this contest gains control of the door and will open it, shove an arm through and grab an opponent by the hair, clothes, wrist and drag him through the opening into their carriage. They will have scored a victim.

Gary Blackwood and two bush tribers are gaining control of the carriage’s forward door that joins to the carriage claimed by Enemy Two school. Other bush tribers divide the sprawling scrum of us into two packs to lend weight at each door. The carriage’s main doors slide shut for departure. The train creaks away from the station, quickly gathers speed and twists double-jointedly on its snigs. Bodies are being squashed in the door-scrums, boaters are toppling to the floor, crushed, there is barely enough air to breathe but everyone is excited nonetheless to be a part of this game. We plebs are shoulder to shoulder with almost-men and bush-tribers. We are honoured to have a role to play, this bond with them, this common cause.

Gary Blackwood yells a command. How many stops till we get to Redfern Station? We must hunt a head before Redfern Station so we can feed it to the Abos. After Redfern Station we must do our best to hunt heads from an enemy carriage and feed them to the Westies at every station we slow down through through the Western Suburbs. He begins a countdown. One. Two. Three. Heave. The two scrums press forward at their appointed doors, plebs in the middle of the pack, bush tribers and seniors behind ordering us to heave, heave, heave.

I’m in the Carlos Toyne scrum being shoved forward while around me other plebs are forced sideways. My arms are pulled backward to the point of dislocation. Boys who a second ago were laughing begin to cry, terrified.
I
am terri-fied. Hysterical voices scream for the shoving to stop, please, stop because an arm is hurting, a leg, a foot. But the scrums edge on. The Enemy One door is barged open far enough for Carlos Toyne to grip an enemy collar and try to pull it through the gap. Enemy One fists poke through the gap to punch Toyne but he withstands the blows with guttural grunts and refuses to let the collar go. The captive’s head is now in the crook of Toyne’s arm. He punches the head. A senior boy punches the head and asks a pleb near him if he’d like a turn to punch the head. The boy says No but the senior demands that he does. The boy punches the head weakly. “Harder,” the senior says. The pleb shakes his head: No.

Enemy One seniors attempt to pull their boy back into their carriage. They lift his feet off the ground to recover him in a tug of war. The boy’s trouser leg rips exposing his underpants. Rips further. The trousers tear from his legs and tangle around his ankles. Enemy One has lost him. Carlos Toyne passes him like a prize over his shoulder onto senior shoulders, onto plebs. The boy’s neck-tie is still knotted in place but his shirt has been stripped from beneath his jacket. His underpants are pulled down to his knees. He cups his hands over his privates. Here he comes, passed my way face purple with struggle, cheek grazed raw, blood across his teeth, snot and tears smearing his lips.

“One nil. One nil. One nil. One nil. One nil,” the seniors chant. “More weight,” Toyne cries as Enemy One counter-surges. My scrum suddenly shoves forward. I’m helpless in its tide. Someone has lost his footing, is sinking to the floor and dragging my section of the scrum down with him.

“Heave, heave, heave,” the seniors order.

“Stop, stop,” I plead.

“They’ve backed off,” Toyne cheers. “They’ve backed off.

Good job, good job.”

The scrum goes slack. At its crumpled sections bodies roll clear. The train jolts, slows. Gary Blackwood calls out, “What station? What station?”

“Redfern. It’s Redfern,” a voice replies.

Blackwood leaves his position at the Enemy Two door and swims against the tide of his scrum to the centre of the carriage where the captive lies pulling up his underpants. “Man the main door,” Blackwood orders.

“Don’t, please,” begs the captive. Blackwood tells him to shut up and drops his knee into the boy’s back and chants, “Redfern, Redfern, Redfern.”

The seniors join in, “Redfern, Redfern, Redfern.” They clip plebs’ arms playfully with their fists to let them know they’d better do what they’re told. Everyone must take turns to drop the knee into the captive. “Go on, fucking do it,” they command. Blackwood drops his knee again. “That’s how you fucking do it,” he boasts, grinning. He drops his knee once more into the sobbing captive.

A senior takes a turn. Another senior. A bush triber. Another bush triber. A pleb is pushed towards the captive and made to stand over him and take a turn with his knee. The pleb drops his knee and is made to step aside and let someone else, another pleb, have a go. Another. Then another. Gary Blackwood cheers and applauds them. The accolade spurs others to take a turn and win Gary Blackwood’s favour.

I want to win his favour. I want to take a turn. Nothing could be easier than to drop the knee into this pitiful captive and be rewarded with a cheer in my honour, applause. Instantly I would
belong
. But I do not, cannot take a turn. I slip behind watchers to avoid Gary Blackwood catching my eye and singling me out as the next who must drop the knee and prove he belongs.

The train doesn’t stop at Redfern Station. It slows to walking pace beside the platform. Gary Blackwood pulls the main door open. He and two bush tribers lift the captive to his feet but he refuses to stay standing. He collapses to the ground, writhing and swearing against being thrown from the train. Blackwood laughs at him and orders two bush trib-ers to grip the captive they call Scum under his arms and hoist him up and push him onto the platform. “Go,” he calls.

“Do it now. Quick.”

Out goes the captive, sent tripping and tumbling across the platform, his trousers and underpants around his ankles. Gary Blackwood chants, “Boong food, boong food, boong food.” He slides the door shut and gives the order for another head to be hunted, this time for throwing to the Westies. The scrums heave at the Enemy One and Enemy Two doors. Three stations later an Enemy Two boy is taken and kneed, his trousers and underpants pulled down to his ankles, his shirt stripped from him before ejection. Soon after, Enemy Two retaliates. It overpowers Gary Blackwood’s scrum which is low on numbers because of a need to defend Carlos Toyne’s door against a major Enemy One assault. One of the smaller bush tribers is captured. He’s fed to the Westies by Enemy Two despite a drive with a beefed-up scrum to capture one of theirs and make a trade.