Impractical Jokes (21 page)

The voice on the other end was not the voice of Carolyn Winters but that of someone else entirely. Given the situation, holding the line sounded like a very good idea.

‘Um . . . yes.'

Beethoven's Sixth Symphony began playing in Dad's ear. Despite being one of the most soothing pieces of music in the history of deaf composers, it served only to set Dad's pulse racing. What dawned on him was the very real possibility that this music was actually coming from the telephone system of the Gas & Fuel legal department.

‘Oh, dear.'

The wait was excruciating yet welcome at the same time. As a million thoughts whizzed through Dad's head the one he kept returning to was that as long as he wasn't talking to anyone he couldn't make things any worse. Unfortunately, unless you're trying to get your phone connected through a major Telco, you can't stay on hold forever.

‘Gas & Fuel legal department. How may I direct your call?'

‘Carolyn Winters, please.'

‘Thank you, sir. Putting you through now.'

Beethoven's
Pastorale
had moved on to a jaunty second movement but it was doing little to improve my dad's mood. What was becoming clearer with each passing second was that his future legal wellbeing quite possibly lay in the hands of a woman named Carolyn Winters who, much to my father's dismay, actually existed. Not only that, but my father had, as recently as one hour ago, offered to show her how to use a suppository. Even if this offer had been genuine it was clearly inappropriate, particularly to a member of the legal profession whom you had only just met over the phone. This was as far as my dad's thinking got before he heard a voice cut through the violins on the other end of the line.

‘Carolyn Winters.'

‘Ah. Yes. Hello, Ms Winters. This is Ronald Pickering. I spoke to you earlier.'

‘How could I forget?'

‘Ah, ha. Yes. Well. Anyway . . . I have checked my diary and next Thursday morning is as clear as a whistle. So I can definitely come in and meet with you.'

‘That's good to hear, Mr Pickering.'

‘Can I just get the address again?'

‘Yes. It's number eighteen Lower Esplanade, St Kilda. It's on the corner of Acland Street. I'll see you next Thursday.'

Dad was fairly sure Gas & Fuel were going to throw the book at him and for the next ten days behaved like a man condemned, skimming through the five stages of grief at the consistent rate of two days per stage.

Kicking things off with denial, Dad started listing the reasons they wouldn't be able to convict him of anything.

‘Well, they've got no evidence for a start. We left nothing at the scene, we wore gloves so there'd be no fingerprints and the only witness is too scared of his wife to get us into trouble. They really have nothing on us.'

‘Except for the rotary fencepost digger in the shed and one hundred and twenty losers who witnessed us buy a parking meter,' I offered.

‘Never mind all that, champ. If they knew about that stuff they wouldn't just be asking me in for a chat; they'd be ready to prosecute. If you ask me, they're just fishing for info because they don't have enough evidence to make a case. Provided I don't give them anything, we should be fine.'

This was followed by a full day of a game called, ‘surely they wouldn't'. The rules of the game are simple. You start by saying ‘surely they wouldn't', then insert a thing that they surely wouldn't do and finish with a rationalisation as to why they surely wouldn't do it. This rationalisation is often best followed by a grand statement like ‘no reasonable man would convict me of that'.

‘Surely they wouldn't press
criminal
charges. We were just trying to have a bit of fun. No
reasonable
man would convict me of that.'

‘Surely they wouldn't make me pay the repair costs. They have insurance for things like that. Nobody in
their
right mind
would go after one man for the money.'

‘Surely they wouldn't take things that seriously. I was just playing a trick on a mate and made a simple mistake. No court
in the land
would convict me of that. It would just be Un-Australian.'

Ah, the old ‘Un-Australian' defence. The last refuge of the damned.

On day three, anger came swiftly to my father. By his logic, there's no way they could have known that he was responsible for the gas leak unless someone had blabbed.

‘Bloody Roger. That rat. I told him not to tell Richard. That doesn't mean he can tell bloody Gas & Fuel. That fink.'

‘Let's not leap to conclusions, Dad. We don't know it was him.'

‘Well, who else could it be? The only other witness was . . . Where have you been going during the day?'

‘To school, Dad.'

‘And you have witnesses?'

‘Of course I do.'

‘Then it had to be Roger. And if he thinks I'm going to take the rap for this without taking him down with me, he is an idiot. Something tells me his wife would appreciate a phone call.'

Thankfully the personal destruction of Roger became a lower priority to my dad than bargaining his way out of trouble, which he started considering on day six.

‘I could do time for this.'

‘Don't be so dramatic, Ron. I'm sure you'll be able to sort it all out.'

‘No, Pammy. We can't be that naïve. Maybe if I plead guilty, they'll go easy on me.'

‘Why don't you just go in and see what they have to say about it?'

‘Maybe if I pay the repair bill they will drop all the charges.'

‘You don't even know if there are charges.'

‘Maybe community service. I could go around to schools telling them that gas is no laughing matter.'

‘I don't know how successful that would be.'

‘What? Are you saying the youth of today couldn't learn from my tragic tale of gas?'

‘I'm sure they could. I just doubt it could be anything other than a laughing matter.'

Come day eight, in the depression stage, the minutiae of life took on great significance. Each act, moment or event was commented on, as though being recorded for some great archive that would be open to the public upon my dad's release from prison.

‘Take a good look at this salmon patty. This could be the last salmon patty I eat for a while. Yep. Won't be getting any salmon patties in the clink, that's for sure. When people on the inside ask me what freedom tastes like, I'll tell them it tastes like salmon patties with tartare sauce.'

As the big day drew nearer, Dad moved on to acceptance, trying to find the silver lining for this ridiculous cloud.

‘Learn from me, son. Don't make the same mistakes I've made. Practical jokes are more dangerous than you think. Sure, they seem like fun. But before you know it you're going to jail. Don't do it, son. Become a lawyer, keep your head down and leave jokes to the professionals. You don't want to end up a jailbird like your old man.'

Thursday morning rolled around and Dad left home for what he believed could be the last time. He had worked himself into such a state that he reasonably expected the legal offices of the Gas & Fuel Corporation would have an on-site court for the immediate criminal trial of wretches such as himself. This would of course be directly adjacent to a holding cell and penal processing office. His deluded fantasy barely stopped short of being dispatched on a convict vessel, bound for exile in a new colony. It certainly didn't include even the slight realisation that the constitution of Australia in no way endowed a quasi-governmental utility service provider with any legal standing to hear criminal cases or administer punishment. At best it could impose a late payment fee or immediately dispatch a man in a blue jumper to re-read your meter. Other than that it was an almost purely administrative authority. This was a legal detail lost on my father as he made his melancholy journey to St Kilda.

Dad parked his car at the bottom of The Esplanade and reluctantly made his way to the corner of Acland Street, counting the numbers as he went. As he did so he took big lungfuls of sea air, hoping the smell of salt would linger in his nostrils on his first night in the big house.

He came to number eighteen. He looked at it. He checked the address written on the piece of paper then returned his gaze to number eighteen Acland Street. Looking back at him was the big, laughing, neon face of Luna Park.

Dad dropped to his knees with sheer relief, intoxicated with the heady waft of freedom. He thought about kissing the ground but out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a hobo urinating on a dumpster and thought better of it. He stood up, looked at the piece of paper and back at Luna Park. All he could say was, ‘Bloody. Brilliant.'

He immediately rang the number of the Gas & Fuel legal department to offer congratulations.

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

‘Of course.'

The Beethoven kicked in again and Dad began to giggle.

‘Gas & Fuel legal department. How may I direct your call?'

‘I'd like to speak to Richard bloody Opie.'

The receptionist on the other end of the line burst out laughing. This laughter was joined by the laughter of others and then a smattering of applause. Finally a familiar voice came on the line.

‘This is Richard Opie speaking.'

After some prodding Richard revealed the true magnitude of his operation. At his office he had arranged for a second phone line to be installed. This was connected to a red telephone and his receptionist was given a very specific script to follow whenever the red phone rang. The red phone was also connected to a tape recorder loaded with a Beethoven cassette and a second red phone which sat on the desk of Richard's assistant Carol A.K.A. Carolyn Winters. All of this took place directly in front of Richard's office where he sat laughing like a drain. All in all it was a masterpiece.

For six months after Dad's brush with the law, nothing happened. After a significant wake-up call, Dad and I resumed trying to learn whatever lesson we were meant to learn from it. Possibly the lesson was that we should learn to grow up and stop pulling pranks, but to be honest that just seemed too simple. We figured there was a greater selection of lessons on offer from this debacle, and with time and rumination we could learn a more valuable lesson which was far more in tune with our lifestyle. We just had to be patient.

The only problem was that for six months we had a bright red parking meter, welded to the top of an eight foot steel pole, sitting in our shed. Mocking us. A constant reminder of the failure of Operation Lovely Rita. We couldn't go to the shed to get a hammer without feeling the sting of defeat. Some days it was as if Richard's head were atop that pole, laughing at us.

One day, after fetching dad a beer from the fridge in the shed, it all became too much to ignore.

‘Hey, Dad. I was just thinking about Operation Lovely Rita.'

‘What were you thinking, champ?'

‘I was just wondering what lesson we're meant to learn from it.'

‘I don't know. There are a lot of lessons you could learn. Like that a man's got to know his limitations. Or dial before you dig. The list is almost endless.'

‘Well, I was thinking it might be something else, Dad.'

‘Like what?'

‘Well, perhaps the lesson to learn here is that a job worth starting is a job worth finishing.'

‘You know, champ, that is a very important lesson to learn.'

‘I know.'

‘I know.'

‘I know.'

There was a brief pause as we realised we were slightly out of conversational sync and not entirely sure of what it was we knew we knew. This pause gave Dad just enough time to attempt some rational, grown-up thought.

‘But it's too dangerous, son. We almost blew up an entire block. Maybe it's best just to play it safe for a while.'

‘But that's the thing, Dad. Sure we may have nearly blown up a suburb when we ruptured a gas main, but now we know
exactly
where that gas main is. This has pretty much become the safest prank we could ever pull.'