Wake In Fright (4 page)

‘I won’t be drinking any more, thanks, Jock. I’ll have to eat,’ he said, realising nevertheless that he had been put in the position of having to complete the round.

The policeman seemed content with that and addressed himself to his beer.

Soon he said: ‘Where are you going to eat?’

‘I don’t know. Where’s a good place?’

‘The Two-up school’s pretty good if you want a good steak.’

Grant, like every Australian, had heard of Two-up schools. Every city has one and in the outback, miners, labourers, rail-waymen, anybody desperate for diversion—and that is almost everybody—will gather from a radius of a hundred miles to wager on the fall of the illegal pennies.

‘They serve meals at the Two-up school, do they?’ he asked.

‘Best in town,’ said the policeman, with the proprietorial pride which all Bundanyabba people evinced when they spoke of the city’s excesses.

‘Where is the place?’

‘Just around the corner from the main street, I’ll take you round there in a minute.’

Grant wondered whether free bets were allowed the police in Bundanyabba, but he did not raise the point with Crawford. He was beginning to like the policeman and, dimly, he was aware that this was a strong indication that he had drunk too much.

Crawford had finished his beer and was fiddling expectantly with the glass.

‘A couple more?’ said Grant, because he didn’t know how to avoid it. He handed over the money and Crawford went for the beer. He took a little longer this time and when he came back he said, ‘I slung your change to the girl…told her it was yours…do you a bit of good when you come in again.’

Grant could have pointed out that it was not at all likely that he would ever come in here again, and even less likely that the barmaid would remember him if he did; but he said nothing. He was smoking one cigarette after another now, as men do when they are drinking.

‘Police have much to do in Bundanyabba?’ he asked without really caring much whether they did or not.

‘No, John, no; on the whole, no! We just keep an eye on things.’ Crawford became a shade ponderous as he spoke in a semi-official capacity.

‘Not much crime?’

‘Almost none at all, John, nothing serious anyway. About the honestest town in Australia this is.’

‘So?’ Grant strove to look impressed.

Crawford rather spoiled the effect of his declaration by adding: ‘’Course no one’s really game to try anything because we’d get ’em so quickly.’

‘So?’

‘It’s so isolated, see? You can’t get out of the place in a hurry without everybody knowing about it.’

‘No. I suppose not.Then it’s a pretty easy life for you?’

‘It’s pretty good,’ said Crawford.‘’Course we do have quite a few suicides…they’re a bit of trouble.’

Grant remembered having heard something of the suicide rate in Bundanyabba and the local custom of declaring the most blatant acts of self-destruction ‘accidental death’. He asked the policeman why.

‘Well,’ said the policeman thoughtfully, ‘I suppose it’s because so many suicides give the place a bad name.’

Grant had heard another story about Bundanyabba to the effect that the local authorities kept the official thermometer on the lawn in front of the Town Hall. When the temperature rose above one hundred degrees in the shade, the lawn sprinklers were turned on to cool the thermometer down. In this way Bundanyabba’s official maximum temperature seldom rose above one hundred degrees.

There was, reflected Grant, possibly some connection between the official attitudes towards suicide and high temperatures, although he was inclined to disbelieve the story about the thermometer.

Anyhow, the whole thing was far too complicated to
pursue at this stage of the evening.

‘I really must go and eat, I’m afraid,’ he said.

‘Have another before you go?’

‘No. No really, I’ve had enough, thanks; I’ll pass out if I don’t eat soon.’

‘Easy seen you’re not a Yabba-man, John,’ said the policeman. ‘Come and I’ll take you round to the School.’ The School, Grant realised, was another name for the Two-up game. More commonly still it was simply referred to as ‘the Game’.

The noise of the bar dropped away as though they had shed something tangible when they stepped out into the main street. Grant tried to count the number of beers he had drunk, but found he couldn’t. ‘Fresh’ would have been a gross misnomer for the air in the main street, but it was different from the air in the bar and Grant felt its effect.

He looked affectionately at Crawford. A character, that’s what Crawford was, a fascinating chunk of local colour. He, John Grant, was savouring him to while away the time, making an erudite little study of Bundanyabba man. Grant stumbled slightly stepping from the footpath to the road.

Crawford led him a couple of blocks down the main street, talking at length on the features of life in Bundanyabba. Grant wondered whether Bundanyabba people talked as much
among themselves as they did to strangers about the virtues of their city. He had the impression that they did, the city seemed to be an obsession with them. Yabba-Men—wasn’t yabba Aboriginal for talk? That seemed to be the basis for a pun, but he could not tie the threads of the thought together.

Crawford turned into one of the main cross-streets and a few yards down they entered a long dark lane. The lane ran parallel with the main street, and on one side Grant could see the backs of the business premises and shops silhouetted against the sky. On the other side were the tall paling fences bordering the backyards of people’s homes.

There were no lights in the lane, and the buildings threw a dark shadow so that up to a foot or so above head level all was complete darkness. Grant became aware of many figures in the darkness.Twenty or so men were standing about in the lane, talking in low voices. Cigarettes glowed orange and then dimmed as men smoked, and often a match would flare briefly yellow. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Grant saw that he and Crawford were attracting mild attention.

‘How goes it, Jock?’ a voice would drift from knots of men.

‘Not bad, Jim, how’s it?’ Crawford would reply, identifying people by their voices as far as Grant could make out, because he could not distinguish the features on a single face.

They came to a gate where two men were standing with
the nonchalance only adopted by men standing guard.

‘G’night, Jock,’ they said, as Crawford and Grant drew near. Grant could see they were looking at him as piercingly as one could look piercing through almost complete darkness.

‘This is a mate of mine, John Grant,’ said Crawford. ‘You can let him in any time, he’s all right.’

The two men grunted, and Grant and Crawford went through the gate into what seemed to be a yard at the back of a shop-building. Grant wondered why such care should be taken to guard an establishment which was so obviously tolerated by the police.

As if answering him Crawford said, ‘They won’t let you in unless they know you.They’ve had a lot of trouble with newspaper blokes. They come out here every now and then and write the place up—you know, sort of make a fuss about the gambling and the drinking.Then we’ve got to shut the Game down for a while and make the pubs close at ten.’

Crawford paused a moment, then added bitterly: ‘They’re a bloody nuisance, I can tell you.’

They passed through the yard into a large room fitted with wooden benches and plank seats. A number of men were sitting at the benches eating. One side of the room was fitted out like a hamburger stall. Two men in open-necked shirts were cooking steaks on the stove.

Crawford went up to the counter and said, ‘Fix a steak for me mate, Joe.’

One of the men said, ‘G’day, Jock,’ and slapped another steak down on the grilling plate.

‘That’ll cost you six bob,’ said Crawford, ‘and it’ll be the best six bob’s worth you ever had.’

Grant wondered whether the organisers of the Game leased the catering rights, or simply provided the restaurant as part of the general organisation. Crawford’s enthusiasm for the meals served would have suggested that he had some interest in the business if Grant had not known that Bundanyabba people were all proud of the Game. Presumably this pride extended to the facilities.

Through a door at the other end of the room Grant could see about a hundred men crowded around an open space in which two men were conferring. That undoubtedly would be the famous Game.

‘Come and I’ll show you inside while you’re waiting,’ said Crawford.

The section where the Game was in progress had probably once been a large storeroom. In the centre was a patch of green carpet about ten feet square. This was edged by a wooden bench about nine inches high, which was crowded with players.

Behind them, thrusting between their shoulders, squatting and standing, rising in tiers of humanity until they reached the side walls, were the rest of the players. Now that he could see the whole room Grant guessed there must have been about three hundred men in there. They were all dressed in belted trousers with open-necked shirts, except for a few with only singlets over their torsos. Grant felt a little conspicuous in his safari jacket.

In the centre of the carpet square were the two men whom Grant had seen conferring.They were both big, gaunt, rapacious-looking; quite obviously the controllers of the Game. With them was a small nondescript man holding a slip of wood in his hand. Grant saw him drop a bundle of notes to the ground at his feet.

‘You know about the Game?’ asked Crawford.

‘Only vaguely,’ said Grant.

‘Well that bloke with the kip is the spinner.’

‘Oh?’ said Grant.

‘He’s dropped fifty quid in the centre. That’s got to be covered before they’ll let him spin.’

Various players around the square were throwing notes on to the carpet.The controllers were gathering them up.Then one called out: ‘He’s set!’

‘That means the fifty quid in the centre’s covered,’ said
Crawford. ‘Now all the others can have their side-bets.’

Around the square, men were dropping little piles of notes and crying out: ‘Ten quid tails,’ or ‘Five heads,’ or ‘Ten bob tails,’ or ‘Twenty quid tails,’ according to their purses or ambitions.

As soon as the money hit the ground, other men dropped bundles the same size on top of it, declaring their intention to bet on the opposite side of the coins.

To Grant, who was none too clear-headed anyway, it seemed that money was being sprayed light-heartedly in all directions for no apparent reason.There must have been more than a thousand pounds on the carpet.

But there was nothing light-hearted about the faces of the players.They were intent, set, calculating.The whole business was transacted in terms of fairly subdued calls, except when some gambler, unable to get his stake covered, would shout to attract the attention of players on the other side of the ring.

Soon everybody settled down and a quiet fell on the room. One of the controllers said, ‘All set?’ and looked around.There were no objections, so he produced two pennies and placed them carefully on the slip of wood the nondescript man was holding.

The controller stood back.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Spin ’em!’

The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up
into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet.

There was silence.

The controllers went over and inspected the coins.

‘Tails!’

Immediately activity burst out in the room as players dived at the pile of notes around the ring, extracting their winnings. Piles of perhaps two hundred pounds were rapidly divided by the simple process of each man taking what was due to him.

‘Get the idea, John?’ said Crawford.

‘More or less—they just bet on whether the pennies will come down heads or tails, is that it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘But what’s all this business on the sides about?’

‘Well, once the spinner’s bet is covered anyone can have a bet on the side.’

‘Then how does the School make a profit?’

‘They take a cut from the spinner, and if any of the side blokes have a big win they’re expected to sling a bit.’

The division of money was complete now and the School was settling down for the next spin.

‘You’d think,’ said Grant, ‘that everybody’d be at each other’s throats when they settle, it all seems pretty confused.’

‘Hardly ever been a fight in the place. Everybody knows what he’s got coming out of the ring, and he takes it—simple as that. ‘Course it probably wouldn’t work anywhere except in The Yabba. All these blokes know each other, y’know.’

The pennies were spinning in the air again.

‘Tails!’ and again the scramble for winnings.The man with the kip was stolidly surveying the mass of notes at his feet. He looked as though he was wading in money, thought Grant.

‘When does he stop spinning?’ he asked Crawford.

‘When he likes, or when he throws heads—that means he loses the lot.’

‘Does he have to leave all his money in?’

‘No, he’s only got to have a quid in the centre.’

The spinner threw tails again, and Grant calculated that he must now have four hundred pounds in front of him. Grant pushed forward, fascinated by the profusion of crumpled notes.

The coins flashed in the air once more.

Again the tails, and this time the spinner tossed down the kip and began to shovel the notes into his pockets. He had turned fifty pounds into eight hundred in less than a quarter of an hour. He picked up the last fistful of notes and thrust them into the hands of one of the controllers, walked out of
the ring with unmoved countenance, pushed through the crowd and disappeared out of the door.

‘That was Charlie Jones,’ said Crawford. ‘He comes in every pay day with fifty quid and throws until he has eight hundred quid or nothing.’

‘Does he win or lose in the long run?’

‘He pulls out the eight hundred about once every six weeks.’ Crawford added as though in explanation: ‘He’s only got to throw four tails in a row to get that, y’know.’

‘Very nice.’

Another player had taken the kip and laid out an investment of one pound.

Grant said: ‘My steak’s probably ready.’