Impractical Jokes (20 page)

Still trying to plug the growing hole in the ground and very much confused, I unwittingly matched his volume. With the two of us dressed in black, surrounded by digging equipment and me on my knees covered in dirt, we looked like a theatre company for the hard of hearing putting on an amateur production of ‘The Great Escape' and having a lot of trouble remembering its lines.

‘Well, Dad. You know when you go to light the barbecue but it doesn't light for a while?'

‘Yes.'

‘It smells like that.'

‘Charles.'

‘Yes?'

‘Run!'

We tried to bundle up our digging equipment, cement and parking meter as quickly as we could and make a dash to the car. But after two steps, we dropped everything, causing a loud racket which woke every dog in the neighbourhood and prompted house lights all around us to switch on in sequence. We were frozen with terror, not knowing where to run. All I remember thinking was that given the impending capture, denying that I had ever seen my father before in my life was actually going to be far easier than I had imagined.

Our complete failure to do anything was soon remedied by Roger, Richard's neighbour who lived across the street. You see, Roger smoked. But Roger's wife didn't know he smoked. She thought he'd quit. This meant that every night before bed, Roger would sneak out into his front garden for a cheeky cigarette, before having a mint and sneaking back inside to carry on with the long-term deception he called a marriage. So when our excavation equipment hit the ground, he emerged enigmatically from the shadows, lit cigarette in hand.

‘Is that you, Pickering?' Dad had something of a neighbourhood reputation. ‘What are you up to this time?'

‘For god's sake, Roger. Get inside your house.'

‘I don't think so, Ron. I don't want the missus to know I smoke.'

‘We just hit a gas pipe, Roger.'

‘Bloody hell!'

In the shock Roger let go of his cigarette. He dropped to his hands and knees in a panic and started groping furiously around for it. We dropped to the ground with him to talk this whole thing through.

‘Roger, whatever happens here, you can't let Richard know it was us.'

‘Well you can't let the missus know I smoke.'

‘Deal.'

‘Deal.'

The three of us shook on it, like gentlemen, and then ran off into the night.

From Dad's car we called the Gas & Fuel emergency number to report the mysterious smell of gas in the street. Attempting to regain some of our rapidly diminishing anonymity, Dad made the phone call as moronic as possible.

‘Hey. Yeah. Um. I was in Shasta Avenue and kind of smelled gas or something and figured that, yeah, maybe you guys should come and check it out or something. Yeah. Bye.'

A bizarre mix of curiosity, fear and a previously absent sense of civic duty compelled Dad and I to stay in the car and see that everything worked out ok. We turned off the interior light, sunk down in the seats and peered out the rear window. As we waited to see our misadventure play out, I was struck by an unshakable feeling of déjà vu. The beating of my heart ringing in my ears, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach; I had felt them all before, hiding with childhood friends from the inevitable repercussions of our boyhood actions. What I simply couldn't get my head around was that on most of those prior occasions I had been hiding
from
Dad. What kind of upside-down reality had we created where Dad and I would be hiding together from someone else? The world as I knew it had changed forever. Whether for better or worse remained to be seen, but one thing was clear. Throughout this story I may have made numerous mentions of my father's immaturity, but this was the first and only time I felt as though we were the same age.

I didn't have long to linger on that thought as a small Gas & Fuel van duly arrived. Two men got out, walked over to the hole, took one look at it and very quickly got in their van and drove away. In the stillness that followed, I tried to be optimistic in the face of mounting evidence of a catastrophe.

‘Perhaps it isn't as bad as we thought.'

‘Champ. Something tells me that's not the case.'

Three minutes later two large emergency trucks arrived. They were as big as fire engines, had flashing blue lights and telescopic ladders mounted to their roofs. A team of about fifteen men in coveralls and hard hats leapt from the vehicles, split into teams and set about saving the day. One team went straight to the hole, another headed for the supply valve that controlled the street while another two teams headed to either end of the road to stop traffic. In what seemed like a matter of seconds they had shut down the entire street.

As they were cordoning off our only avenue for escape, Dad and I decided it was time to make our exit. Particularly before anyone discovered we were the proud owners of a goddamned rotary fencepost digger. In a fairly inspired attempt at a ruse, Dad wound down his window as we pulled up to the roadblock and asked what the problem was.

‘Bit of a problem?'

If playing dumb were a sport, my dad could compete at the Olympics.

‘Yeah. Major gas leak.'

‘Burst pipe?'

‘No. Burst main. Some idiots have dug into the main supply line that services this whole block. Bloody lucky the whole street didn't go up.'

There was then a long pause. I can't tell you how long because my heart had stopped beating and in moments like these time becomes very hard to quantify. Thankfully Dad spoke what must have been a millisecond before the silence became suspicious.

‘Well, good luck with that.'

And we drove home.

‘You're back early. How did it go?' Mum asked.

There was another long pause. Once again the length of which is hard to gauge, although this time around I'm pretty sure it was Dad's heart that stopped. As Mum waited for an answer, I watched Dad's face as he very slowly rebooted his decision-making capabilities and settled on exactly how much of the story to tell. Initially his eyes indicated that he was going to opt for a reprise of the moronic tête-à-tête with the Gas & Fuel chap. But with each millisecond that passed it dawned a little more on Dad that there was simply no way he could keep the events of the evening a secret within his own family. As the penny finished its descent an enormous smile made its way across Dad's face and we both collapsed in laughter.

It was some time before we collected ourselves enough to tell Mum the hilarious tale of how we almost blew up a suburb. Despite some initial concern for our wellbeing, she too was soon in stitches. It has been said that comedy is tragedy plus time. It turns out the same goes for near-tragedy.

Upon his return, Richard lived in fear. All he knew was that he'd been away for a week and come home to a disconnected gas supply and a large crater in his lawn. He pumped Roger for information but, good to his word, Roger gave nothing away.

‘It was Pickering, wasn't it?'

‘Was it, Richard?'

‘I was asking you. You must know something.'

‘Richard, all I know is that I came out for a smoke one night to find a couple of chaps telling me there was a gas leak and that I should put out my cigarette and go back inside. Which I did. Other than that there's nothing more I can tell you.'

All of which is true, without actually telling the truth. A skill I'm sure came in very handy for Roger maintaining the duplicity of a successful smoking career and a happy, if ignorant, marriage.

As for Dad and I, we planned to just kick back and relax while Richard appeared to worry himself into a paranoid state. We figured there was probably some kind of a lesson to be learned here and we were going to do our best to figure out what that lesson might be, but in the short term, at least, our job was done. If nothing else we had had a fairly spectacular adventure and had gotten away with it nicely.

Or so we thought.

14

Operation Lovely Rita—Part 2

T
he dispensary phone rang on an unusually busy July morning in the pharmacy. As Dad picked up the receiver he was being well-occupied by three waiting prescriptions and Mr Klapstick, an elderly regular who on this occasion was requesting a detailed seminar on how to use a suppository. All in all Dad could be forgiven for being distracted.

‘Hello.'

‘Hello. Is this Ron Pickering?'

‘Yes.'

‘Hello, Mr Pickering. My name is Carolyn Winters from the Gas & Fuel legal department.'

‘Look, Carolyn, I'm pretty sure we've paid our bill and even if we haven't I think maybe a reminder notice is perhaps a little more polite than a call from the legal department. Now if you don't mind I'm in the middle of something quite important and if there's one thing I hate it's having to show someone twice how to use a suppository.'

My dad really is the master of using one too many details as a means of driving people away.

‘Actually, Mr Pickering, I was wondering if I could speak to you about an incident in Shasta Avenue, Brighton, two months ago.'

All of a sudden Mr Klapstick's rectum didn't seem quite so important. Dad's brain desperately tried to process the sentence he'd just heard but came up with nothing. After a suspiciously long pause all his brain could offer was, ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘On the evening of the twenty-fourth a gas main servicing an entire block of Shasta Avenue was ruptured by an unauthorised excavation and after speaking to local residents we believe you may have some information as to how the incident occurred.'

Dad's temperature had now risen sharply and he was beginning to sweat. In fact, if his fever got any worse he was going to need one of Mr Klapstick's suppositories. In desperate need of time to formulate a strategy, Dad opted for the best defence he had.

‘A gas main you say?'

And another gold medal for Extreme Naivety in the Playing Dumb Olympics goes to Ronald Pickering.

‘Yes, Mr Pickering. A high pressure gas main that cost the State of Victoria over seventy-five thousand dollars to repair.'

And with that Dad immediately suspected Richard. It all just sounded so ridiculous. Sure he'd ruptured a major gas supply line for an entire suburb and witnessed the full-scale emergency response required to stabilise the area, but seventy-five grand? No way. This had Opie written all over it. Positive that he had accurately detected the mischievous hand of his adversary, Dad's fever subsided and he was immediately imbued with new conversational confidence.

‘Well, I really have no idea what you're talking about.'

‘That may be the case, Mr Pickering, but we would still very much like to speak to you.'

‘We'll I'd be happy to tell you what I know about it. But seeing as that is very little, we'll have quite a bit of time left over. Perhaps I can show you how to use a suppository, Ms Winters?'

There was an audible gasp on the other end of the phone. After a few false starts, Carolyn Winters regained her power of speech.

‘I'm . . . well . . . I don't think that will be necessary, Mr Pickering. We can definitely confine our discussion to the issue at hand. Now, would you be available to come into our offices next Thursday morning at ten o'clock? We're located at number eighteen Lower Esplanade, St Kilda.'

As elaborate as this had all been, Dad felt it was time to call their bluff.

‘Well, look, I'm not sure if that time suits. How about I check my diary and get right back to you, Ms Winters. Can I please have your phone number?'

Carolyn Winters gave Dad her number and hung up the phone. Dad figured that the moment he dialled the number Richard or one of his accomplices would answer and they would all have a big laugh about how, for a moment, Dad had panicked and actually believed he was in serious legal trouble.

After finishing off his scripts and sending Mr Klapstick home with clear instructions and a memorable afternoon ahead of him, Dad waited half an hour and then called the number he had been given.

‘Gas & Fuel legal department, can you hold the line please?'