Warrigal's Way (11 page)

He reached out again and felt my jaw, then said, “You're in good company over there. I know all those boys, but you keep a bit of an eye on me, and if I tip you the wink you go out that back door like your arse is on fire. Right?”

“Too right,” I said. “No argument here, and thanks.” I took the beers back to the table.

“What did he say?” they wanted to know, so I told them.

“Yeah, he's a pretty fair bloke,” said Tully. “But I reckon we should have this one and float.”

“Where you camped?” asked Mick. So I told them about the car crate motel.

“Geez, you can't stay there,” said Stumpy. “Mick and me got a flat in St Kilda. Come on, we'll grab your gear and you can doss in with us.”

“Yeah. Christ, you can't live like that,” agreed Mick.

So we downed our beer said hooroo to Claude, piled into Mick's Holden and went and got my gear. I shifted in with the boys, and over the years they became my best mates and the closest family I had. They still are.

14

A couple of days later, we fronted up to the gate as usual, but although Mick got up, me and Stumpy missed out. So Mick gave Stumpy the car keys and we headed for home.

“Aw, bugger it,” said Stumpy. “Let's go for a drink up the Royal by the markets. It's an early opener. What do you reckon?”

“I dunno. I only get in the Plough because Claude turns his head. These buggers might biff me out on my head.”

“Nah, you'll be right. I'll buy the beer.” So we fronted in, and nobody paid the slightest attention to us. We spent a couple of hours there, then headed for home. Going through St Kilda Stumpy said, “Let's drop in to the snake pit at the George.”

The snake pit was a cellar bar and a set of stairs led down from footpath level. It was fairly big—it would hold forty to sixty at a crush—but there were only fifteen to twenty drinking there when we came in from the back car park. The management didn't like you to come in this way as it involved walking behind the bar, but that didn't worry us unduly. We got a couple of beers off the barmaid, whose name was Teresa, and started having a yarn about nothing much. She reckoned St Kilda footy team were going to win the premiership and we cried her down with Carlton. We
were having a great time, and Stumpy reckoned Teresa was on to me. I wasn't real experienced with the ladies, but I got to feeling he was right, as she would make a beeline back to us after she'd served a customer. She was anywhere from nineteen to twenty-four, only five foot tall, with a pale complexion, big brown eyes, long dark-brown hair and a nice figure.

There were two well-dressed Italian blokes drinking next to us. They looked like models out of a David Jones window. They were having a ripper old barney, all in Italian. They were so loud we could hardly hear each other. They started to wave their arms about, really getting into it, when one bloke accidentally copped Stumpy, who was a fiery little bugger. He spun around and growled, “Watch where you're throwing your arms, you Dago bastard.”

He was getting ready to blue, when one of the blokes dipped his hand under his coat and came out with the biggest gun I'd ever seen. I didn't even stop to think, I took the bar with one bound and headed for the stairs. There wasn't a sprinter alive who could have beaten me to that car that day. I was first out and I think Teresa beat Stumpy to the top of the stairs by a nose. We didn't stop until we got to the car, and when we got home Teresa was still with us. She just sort of shifted in with me—told me I needed looking after and she would do it. There was no way she would go back to the snake pit, not even for her pay. She got them to mail it to her.

We were still shaking a week later, and we never went back to the George. Mick took Teresa in his stride, and he thought that her moving in with me was the most natural thing in the world. “I told you, mate, women are strange thinkers,” he said. He was amazed at our story, and he decided not to drink at the George also. Stumpy reckoned it was disgusting, Teresa and I living together. But Mick told me he was jealous.

It was Christmas and we were all paid up. Don had been
giving me a lot of casual work in the freezers and I had a good quid. Teresa took charge of me, curbed my swearing, and taught me how to act with confidence around women. She took me shopping for a new image. First to a good Italian barber for a hair cut, which I had to admit was great—a bit like the Elvis style but razor cut. Next she helped me buy a suit and some casual clothes—no more ringer shirts and jeans—and I must say she had taste and style. Even the boys had to admit I looked great. My life took a big curve too—dancing, dining and picnics on the beach. I liked being with her and was getting into a comfortable routine.

Teresa had found herself a job in a ladies shop in Footscray and we would drop her off in the morning and wait at the Plough for her after work. We were sitting in the bar one afternoon in March, about two days before my birthday, when the police walked into the pub through both doors. To shoot through would be too obvious, so I sat and panicked. I felt Mick kick my leg and he nodded towards the floor. I put my hand under the table and he gave me his wallet—he was nineteen. The sergeant walked over to our table and asked me my name, so I gave him Mick's and pulled out the wallet, taking out the driver's licence and union ticket and handing them over. He was looking at them just as Teresa put her head in the door.

“There's your missus, mate. You ready to go?” asked Stumpy.

“Be with you in a minute, love,” I called to her. How I kept the fright out of my voice I'll never know. “You satisfied?” I asked the sergeant.

“Yeah, mate,” he said, handing me back the papers. “We have to ask. You looked a bit young, that's all.”

He smiled as I said, “Yeah, I get picked every time.”

“Half your luck,” he said as he laughed, and walked away.

I drank that beer and headed for the door, trying to keep
my cool. I gave Mick back his wallet in the car and breathed in relief. “Christ, I don't ever want to get that close again.”

I came clean with Teresa when we got home. “Does it make a difference?” I asked her.

“No, not really. I'm just surprised, that's all. I thought we were all about the same age. But it doesn't matter to me really.” But it changed me and I became a bit withdrawn.

I'd had two good frights and I was getting a bit paranoid. I knew that if they had taken me down to the station it wouldn't have taken them long to find out my real name, and I had a warrant out on me. So I just went to work and hung around the flat with Teresa. The boys kept telling me that the police wouldn't bother me again, now they had sussed me out, but I was wary. The next three weeks at work didn't help. I got two more scares, as the Department and the cops showed up at the gate twice, and I hid in the freezers. I was getting more paranoid and started seeing spooks all over the place, so I told the boys, “Look, I'm going to float, get up country right away from these bastards.”

“What you gunna do?” asked Stumpy.

“I seen this ad in Saturday's paper for grape-pickers at Mildura. You apply at the Labour Exchange and they pay your fare. I might have a go at that.”

I talked it over with Teresa while the boys played cards. The rest of the mob were over as it was our regular card night. Teresa agreed that if I wasn't comfortable I should go, but I wanted her to come with me.

“No, love. Fate's decided that's it for us. You have to move and I'm a city girl. We had something special, but now we got to move on.”

“What will you do?” I asked her.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Go home and cry for a month.” I've got to admit it hurt.

Teresa went to bed. Mick and I kicked the idea around
between hands, and Mick said he would run me down to suss it out tomorrow.

“I might come too,” said Barry. “I'm getting sick of sitting on the gate, just getting a drip now and then. What do you reckon? You want a mate?”

“Geez yeah.” I brightened up a bit. Barry would be a top travelling mate.

Teresa was awake crying when I went in, so I got into bed and just held her until she cried herself to sleep. I felt like a real bastard, but I had to go. I felt like a rat in a corner.

She cried all the way into town next morning, and tears were running down her face as she stood among her suitcases on the footpath outside the Spencer Street railway station. She wouldn't give me her address. She said we had to part cleanly, so she could get her life back together. I wasn't far from tears myself, seeing her standing there as we drove away. God, life was so bloody unfair. Barry put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “It's hard, mate, but you'll get over it. Trust me, I been there a couple of times. It's time to look forward now, not back.”

I was really glad he'd decided to come. I'd have been a wreck without him.

We got the job, no worries, and all the arrangements were made. The bloke at the desk told us, when you get to Red Cliffs you go into a pool and the grape cockies will pick who they want. Understand?”

We were to leave Spencer Street at seven that night, and we spent the rest of the day getting our gear ready. We had decided to meet up with Mick and Stumpy in Brisbane after the grape-picking job ended, and Mick said he'd bring the rest of my stuff up with them. I lugged my saddle down to a pawn shop and the bloke gave me a tenner for it, which I thought was a good price for the city.

When the boys got home from work we put my gear in the car, picked up Barry, went for a few beers and got to the
station in plenty of time for the train. At seven the train pulled out, with the boys waving us off.

“See you in Brisbane,” Stumpy yelled.

I felt sad as I watched Melbourne recede in the distance. I had gone into enemy territory and found my first true love. It was going to take a lot of empty nights to get over Teresa, if I ever got over her.

15

“You done this before, mate?” I asked Barry.

“Nope. Can't be too hard though, just chuckin' bunches of grapes into buckets.”

“I dunno. If it was that easy, blokes would be hangin' all over the train,” I said.

“You might be right, but we'll know tomorrow.”

The train was two old red rattler carriages hung on the end of a goods train. It bucked and swayed, and the seats were like sitting on a brick. They certainly didn't pamper pickers.

“Geez, these seats are hard,” I said, trying to get my numb rear end comfortable.

“Yeah, I been trying to sleep sitting up. I think my arse has died,” said the bloke sitting opposite us. “I'll be bloody glad to get there.”

As we fell off the train clutching our gear, a tall bloke told us to muster over at the hall. We gathered together, some smoking but most just standing around, all wondering what was to come next. The tall bloke came in again and said, “The growers will be in soon, and when they pick you out, just wait outside with your gear.”

The choosing had been going on for a while when I noticed a short tubby fellow pointing at me. I grabbed my
swag and walked outside, and shortly Barry came out with the bloke we had been on the train with.

“Hey Ed, this is Thommo. We're all going to the same place.”

We jumped onto the back of an old EJ ute and roared out of town. A cluster of tin sheds loomed into sight about two miles out. We drove in through a gate and stopped outside a shed with a chimney. The tubby bloke got out and said, “You'sa can puta your gearses ina the nice-ah rooma. She gota the gooda stofe anda the nice-ah bedses. You picka the grappa tomorrow. Chow.”

He got back in the ute and drove off, and we felt like the last tree on the Gibson Desert. We sort of looked around in a daze. What a palace! Four star pickets and a length of cyclone wire was the “nice-ah” bed, and the pot belly stove was so old that Thommo reckoned the Romans used it to heat their Chico rolls when they took England. We lay out our swags over the wire and tried unsuccessfully to get some sleep. Late in the afternoon “Louie”, as we dubbed him, turned up with a pot of spaghetti and sauce, and some plates, knives and forks. Man, it was good. We sat and yarned a while and I used my primus stove to make a cup of tea.

Then we tried to sleep again. I tossed and turned until finally I threw my swag on the floor and slept like a log.

I was up at about six and nearly suffocated myself getting the “nice-ah” stove to work. I think a bird had nested in the chimney, and the bloody smoke was rolling out of it like a London fog.

Barry woke up coughing and Thommo woke red-eyed. “Kick that bastard to death, Ed, before it gets us all.”

I was racing around the joint opening windows. We fled outside with my primus to brew up.

“Christ,” said Thommo, “I feel like a first cousin to a side of bacon.”

Barry laughed. “Bugger off, you're too ugly. What pig would want you for a relation.”

Thommo grinned. “You know, you could be right.”

We couldn't handle the boss's right name, so he stayed “Louie” to us. He put me and Barry on the picking and took Thommo with him to pick up and dip. After baskets were filled, they were dipped in a concoction and then spread on drying racks of bird wire so the air could get all round them. After they were dry, they were sultanas.

It was bloody hard work. Thommo was earning his quid even harder than us. Louie's old granny, Momma Mia, showed us how to cut the bunches of grapes without damaging the vines. She looked a thousand years old, but around those grape vines she was a human chainsaw. No way we could keep up with her. It was like a cripple racing the Lithgow Flash.

Louie told us he would give us a bob a basket, but it had to be all grapes, no leaves. We reckoned that wasn't bad. The baskets didn't seem all that big, until we came to fill them, then they turned into 44 gallon drums.

At smoko Mrs Louie brought out a heap of scones and a big billy of tea. She was a nice lady.

Thommo came over and said, “How you blokes goin'?”

“Other than aching hands and a million cuts, not bad,” said Barry.

“You want to know about my sore back as well?” I asked.

“Nah mate. I got a beaut one of those,” he said, stretching.

“How we going?” We must of made a hundred quid by now,” Barry groaned.

“You got the tally book?” I asked.

“Yep. Seventeen baskets at a bob each, seventeen bob—eight and six an hour. Good brass if you keep it up.” He laughed.

“Geez mate. Do us a favour and rush over and stop us if you think we're going too fast. We don't want to scorch the vines.”

“Yeah, righto.” Thommo laughed. “I'll pour water on your fevered brow.”

The day felt about three months long before we finally knocked off. Old Louie came over and we expected the bullet, but he told us most blokes didn't even make lunchtime without pulling the pin. He reckoned if we hung in for about a week it would get easier. He was right, of course, and we did the six weeks picking season with him, putting on weight from Mama's cooking and actually enjoying the last three weeks. Like Louie said, we got used to it.

We had a tally up and we had made twenty six quid. You could buy a car with that and we did—an Austin A40. It was a bit long in the tooth, but went like a well-oiled clock. We used Barry's pay to buy it and used mine for travelling costs.

We set off for Queensland. We were headed for Brisbane first, then up to Gympie for the beans, then on to Bowen for the tomatoes, having a look at Rockhampton for the pineapples on the way. This would be quite an experience.