Working Class Boy (19 page)

S
oon we had to move again as Reg couldn't afford to pay for the house. Six kids were a lot more expensive to look after than he knew or Mum remembered. But they never spoke about it in front of us. I heard them talking in bed one night and realised how hard things were getting.

We started moving from one cheap place to another, mostly within striking distance of Port Adelaide. Sometimes Mum wanted to go back to Elizabeth; Reg could never understand why. He hated the place and we had nothing but bad memories from there. After each short stay in Elizabeth we would drift back to Port Adelaide. We rented houses in Ethelton, Wingfield, Mansfield Park and Seaton. Anywhere that was cheap enough. Many battling families lived and worked in these areas and we always seemed to find another place.

I can look back now and see why we moved so much. Mum and Reg would get a house for really low rent because it was a shithole and Mum would say, ‘I think this place'll be really good wi' a coat o' paint and a wee bit o' love.'

‘Too right, love, it will be beautiful,' Reg would say.

Then they would work really hard to make it a home for us. Mum was usually right. Not long after we'd move into a place it would be nice to live in. They were always painting and fixing up houses and of course as soon as they fixed them up the landlord would come around and put the rent up. Then we couldn't afford to stay there so we would have to move to another dive.

We moved from one suburb to another, ending up for a little while in a place called Hindmarsh, a couple of miles out of the city. It had a large Greek community. I got on well with all the Greek kids I met. These kids were not like the kids from Britain I'd grown up with in Elizabeth. They were from working-class families but they seemed to be a lot happier. Not aggressive and dark like the kids in the west. These kids liked to go home to their mums and dads. Their houses were happy places full of laughter and the smell of great food cooking in the kitchens.

The girls were cute too. I had a crush on a girl called Sue. We went to the Hindmarsh pictures together and kissed in the back row.

The guys loved football too, which made me feel right at home. I played in a Greek football team called Hellas, one of the big clubs in Adelaide. I was in the under-12s and we were pretty good for our age. Occasionally our football team got to play at Hindmarsh Stadium, which was just around the corner from our house. This was one of the biggest football grounds in Adelaide, it had lights and a grandstand and everything. I thought I was on my way to playing in the World Cup.

‘Pass the ball!'

‘Hey dickhead. Pass the ball over here.'

‘Skase malaka!' I heard them shout at each other.

I never knew what it meant but within days of being there I was on the football pitch, yelling at the other team. ‘Get out of my way. Skase malaka. What are you an idiot or something?'

One of the boys quickly gave me some advice. ‘If Mum or Dad come to the game, Jim, do me a favour would you?'

‘Sure, what do you want?'

‘Don't try to speak Greek. You'll get us killed.'

But I was sure I heard the same words coming from their fathers as they watched us play.

The school had a choir and luckily for me they didn't sing in Greek so I immediately joined up. Then something happened that changed my life. The choir master pulled me aside after a few days and said to me, ‘Jimmy, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the choir.'

I was shattered. I loved singing and I had always been a good singer – all my teachers had told me so.

‘Why do I have to leave? I love singing in the choir.'

He sat me down. ‘You sing too loud and this choir is about blending in. I'm sorry, but you just don't blend in with the other kids.'

I was horrified. I didn't know what to do. Where was I going to sing now?

Luckily I was listening to a lot of radio. And a lot of the singers in the bands on the radio didn't sound like they would blend with a choir either. So that was it.

‘I'm going to sing in a band,' I said to myself. Not straight away, but as soon as I worked up the courage and found out how to go about it, I would find a band to sing with.

Reg had a young brother called John, the wild one of his family. There's at least one in every family.

John had long sideburns and greasy hair and he dressed differently to anyone I had ever met. Not particularly stylish but he did have a likeable quality about him. Maybe it was because he was an outcast from the Barnes clan and he could see that we were outcasts too that I liked him. He warmed to me immediately too and told me stories about his escapades in the motorbike racing world.

‘I ride sidecar in speedway race meetings. You should come to see me race. I reckon you'd love it, young fella.'

Without a second thought, I jumped at the chance. The following Friday night he took me to a big meeting at Rowley Park Speedway in Brompton, near the city.

‘You'll love this place Jim,' he told me. ‘It smells like petrol and you can't hear nothing but bikes and cars. No bastard can talk to you even if they wanted to.'

This was a different world. Everybody seemed to be some kind of misfit. They were all fat or had speech impediments or something. They were social cripples but I liked them and they liked me. Maybe I was one of them. They were like carnie folk. They didn't care about normal life. They didn't belong in everyday society. They were like a tribe of gypsies. They had their own friends and their own rules; it was a closed group that you could only join if you were brought to them by one of their own. This was my introduction to the entertainment business, when I think about it.

The speedway show was about man and machine. But there was a bit of smoke and mirrors too. I got the feeling they knew who was going to win long before their engines had started. But that didn't stop them from pushing themselves and each other to breaking point.

I would run around in the pits, breathing in the fumes from the roaring machines, watching men frantically fine-tuning their engines. They were also being watched by some rough-looking,
slightly overweight women with tattoos. These girls gazed at the men like they were athletes or even rock stars.

‘Do you need anything, darling?'

‘Just a kiss from you and a fast bike sweetheart.'

‘What about a drink, love?'

The men were doing men's business and the women were always running to get cold beer for their champions.

There were horrific crashes when things didn't go as planned. Some nights, Uncle John and his friends would end up drunk and in tears as close friends were battered, burned and broken. Some were driven away in ambulances to waiting emergency units. I don't know if they ever saw them again. It was life on the edge. But they got the chance to entertain people who were just like them, but were afraid to take the chances these speed freaks took. Next week they would rebuild their smashed-up bikes and cars and limp back to the track again, for one more chance to be a winner.

After a few trips with Uncle John, Reg stopped me going with him. I think he was afraid that I would want to get on the bike and have a ride myself. I didn't have the need for speed yet but I could have caught the bug if I hung around long enough. I'm sure Reg was trying to keep me sheltered for as long as he could from all the dangers that he knew I was drawn to.

The other thing I remember about those times is that my mum was always scared. Every house we lived in seemed to be cased by thieves who were about to break in at any time. Nearly every night Mum would be up crying and panicking. She obviously convinced me the villains were real because after a while I was afraid too, just like her. We all were – myself and my brother and sisters. And we would end up in one bed most nights, too scared to sleep.

These same intruders were following us from house to house too. What could they have wanted? We didn't have anything worth stealing.

In the middle of the night we would hear a noise outside the house.

Bang. Bang. Bang
.

The wind was howling around the house but we could still hear it.

Bang. Bang. Bang
.

Mum would hurry into our room. ‘Don't worry. Go back tae sleep.'

‘What's that noise, Mum?'

‘It's okay, kids. Reg's just making sure the windows cannae be opened from the outside.'

‘What's he doing out there?'

‘He's just bangin' a few nails intae them tae be sure.'

Bang. Bang. Bang
.

By the sound of the nails that we heard being hammered, the windows would never be opened again.

‘Why is he nailing the windows, Mum?'

‘I heard someone sneaking aroon oot there and I just wanted tae be sure you were safe. That's all, go back tae sleep.'

Bang. Bang. Bang
.

‘But we can't sleep, Mum, you've got all the lights on and there's too much noise.'

‘I know but it's better tae be safe than sorry.'

Reg would walk in through the door, soaked to the skin from the pouring rain. ‘There you go love. No one's getting in. Now can we go back to bed?'

‘Go roon the hoose again, just in case they're still there.' Her eyes would be darting to the window as if she caught a glimpse of someone walking past.

‘There's no one there, love. No one in their right mind would be outside on a night like this. Not even a prowler.'

‘Just go roon once more, please. I'm sure I heard someone. I know someone's there.'

‘Jesus love, you're going to scare the kids. No one is out there. I'm bloody telling you.'

‘Aw right then, you kids come tae ma room where you'll be safe.' We'd climb out of our own beds and follow her into her room.

Bang!

‘What was that? I told you someone was oot there!'

‘It's the wind, love. Let's get some sleep.'

Reg didn't seem to be afraid at all and always told us, ‘It'll be all right, kids, you're safe here with me. No one's going to hurt you.' He would be rundown from lack of sleep and stress and always seemed to have a cold from being outside in his dressing gown. These prowlers were killing him – very slowly, but they were killing him.

So after a short while, maybe to keep one step ahead of Mum's demons, or maybe because Mum and Reg had improved the house to the point where we couldn't afford to stay, we would have to move again. To another bad suburb and into another bad house with a new lot of burglars. I said goodbye to my friends and waited to see where we would end up next. The places seemed to go from renovator's delights to hovels.

I ended up at Ethelton Primary School up near the Port, which was fine as this was close to where Reg's folks lived. He liked the area even if our house was a bit of a dump. It was on a dead end street, which backed onto a swamp that would later become a place called West Lakes. At the time we lived there, it was nothing but swamp and the remains of an old factory that no one had been in for about fifty years. There were no lights or houses,
so at night it was pitch black. Mum was frightened out of her wits. I don't know why she moved there.

Once again Mum thought someone was out to get us. One night she had John and his Scottish hoodlum friends hiding out in the empty paddocks around our house, waiting in ambush to catch, once and for all, these people who had been trying to get us. She was sure that this time we would catch them and prove she had been right all along. By then, even we didn't believe her, and we laughed about it a bit. But we never did it in front of her.

Unfortunately for Mum, the criminals were too cunning for us again. John and his mates didn't see a thing. So after hours of sitting in the dark around the house, Mum called off the ambush. ‘Okay John, bring the boys inside for a cup of tea. Maybe we can have a wee drink.'

No sooner were they inside and sitting down than Mum suddenly heard the noises outside again. The prowlers must have been watching, waiting for the boys to come inside.

So out they went and sat there for another few hours. I think that at least one of them brought a gun with him so we were lucky no one came anywhere near the house even by accident. They would have been killed. But no one was coming anywhere near our house, by accident or on purpose. We wouldn't have gone anywhere near it if we didn't live there.

John's friends stopped coming around much after that. I think they lost their sense of humour and had better things to do. It was back to just Mum and us again, cuddling her in a corner of the house, waiting for Reg to get home from nightshift to save her from nothing.

I could never work out why Mum was so scared all the time. In time I worked out that the prowlers, who seemed to be lurking in the shadows wherever we lived, never existed, except maybe in my mum's mind. But I couldn't work out why she thought ‘they' were coming for her, not to mention who ‘they' were. Was there
something in my mum's dark past that we didn't know about that kept her on her toes, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of them at all time? Had she done something that made her feel so bad about herself that she had to run away all her life, even from us, the ones who loved her and needed her more than anyone in the world? Or was it that she just didn't fit in anywhere?

Maybe she couldn't stop roaming until she found her place; a place where she could just stop and breathe. I think it might be as simple as that. I know it has taken me most of my life to just be; to stop for the first time and breathe.

T
he school holidays were great once we lived with Reg. He was happy to show me where he'd played as a child and worked as an adult. It wasn't long until I knew my way around that area like the back of my hand. I liked the place, and still do. It was a very working-class area and quite tough but unlike Elizabeth, the people seemed reasonably happy. You could even walk around the place and not get stabbed or kicked to bits. People passing you on the street would stop and help you if you needed directions. This is what life in Australia was supposed to be like. I was still very young but I felt safe walking around the Port by myself. Maybe I wasn't, but compared to where I'd been this was Disneyland.

It was just around the corner from where I used to escape to when I lived in Elizabeth. I could walk to the beach if I wanted to and the Port River ran right through the place.

Where I came from in Glasgow, the River Clyde was dark and cold and the wind howled through the trees on its banks. It didn't breathe life into you, it sucked you under and held you down. I've read stories about nice rivers that sing to you and
whisper secrets that you can hear if you listen carefully. But not the Clyde. That river cried like a mother who had lost a child and all its secrets were buried on the bottom or washed out to sea with the rest of the rubbish.

The Port River railway bridge was not for the public. We had to jump a fence to reach the small service paths that ran along each side of the railway tracks – wooden slats, with guard rails that led across the bridge. Half of these slats were missing so it could be quite tricky to get from one side to the other. This was where we would sit and do whatever we wanted. The trains that crossed the bridge moved so fast that we couldn't see into them so we presumed they couldn't see us. They shook and rattled the bridge so much we sometimes thought we were about to fall off.

The bridge was right towards the end of the Port River. Just past the bridge was the Causeway, a stretch of road that by-passed the Port and led to the beaches. This was built after the Port had lost its shine. It used to be the driving hub of the whole area; now it was just an old main street with too many pubs and not enough people to fill them. Even the cargo ships never came down this far anymore. They docked at Outer Harbour with its high-tech facilities and new roads in and out. Beyond the Causeway, the river turned into swamp, spreading out into a wet land that should have been home to all sorts of birds and native animals. But because of years of industrial pollution, there was only a swamp, made up of very tough plants that hardly broke the surface of the red-stained ground, burned from the chemicals and rust. All across the swamp there were pools of evil-smelling liquids oozing out of the ground. Nothing lived in there except feral cats and snakes.

The Port in some respects was a lot like the Clyde. Both were murky and dangerous but the Port rolled along a little slower. There was something about it that helped me forget
about Elizabeth. And as I sat on the railway bridge, life beyond where I was moved faster and faster. Much faster than the river flowed, and faster than the trains that whooshed past me on the bridge.

I was sure I saw the water police fishing the odd body out of the river just down from where I would fish. And I heard stories of murder in the area but I wasn't scared. I was too smart to get caught by any weirdos. And I was too fast to be caught by any drunks. Looking back, maybe I was just lucky. Kids did go missing in the area but I never wanted to hear about that from anybody. I was free. I was taught how to fish in the river by Reg's dad. It became my playground.

I used to go swimming in the river with a few friends. One of my friends' dads owned a little dinghy and used to let us borrow it. We would row around the river and jump off the dinghy whenever we felt like it. In the summer this was great fun. The sun would be blazing down and it would be stinking hot. We could dive off the boat and swim whenever there were no big ships passing by. There were cargo ships and fishing boats, big and small, but we just swam around them. Occasionally someone would yell out at us, ‘Get out of the way, you stupid little bastards.' We just jumped back in the boat and rowed away laughing at them.

The water wasn't blue and inviting like a normal river, it was black and threatening, and what we saw floating on the top was only half of what was in there. I'm sure there were things that were weighted down to the bottom too. This river, like the Clyde, had stories it would not give up.

We did see suspicious-looking characters dumping things into it. And I heard about companies dumping chemicals too. The river was dark and dirty but we dived into the depths without
even a thought of what lay beneath the surface. It's a wonder we never got sick from the cocktail of shit that was tossed into it. We were kids and we were tough so we never thought about that at all. I wouldn't swim in there now. Especially when I think of the things that floated past us.

There was a couple of guys who used to go dynamite fishing in broad daylight. This was in the middle of a busy waterway. They would pull up in their boat and throw a stick of dynamite over the side. A few seconds later –
boom!
– there would be an explosion. Next thing, fish would just float to the surface and they would scoop them up with a net and move on down the river to their next spot. We would follow behind, grabbing any fish they left, but these guys didn't want anyone watching them and would threaten us whenever we got too close. How they got away with this, we could never work out, but it did reassure us that there were plenty of fish in the river, waiting to be caught by us.

We would row up to places you couldn't get to by foot, so we felt like we were going somewhere we shouldn't have. Somewhere top secret. But there wasn't a lot going on behind our backs; we just imagined that there was. And we kept our eyes peeled for anything that might interest us.

There were a few nights we went out with Reg and Mum and sat on the railway bridge until sun-up, fishing. We didn't catch too much, just enough to keep us there. Staring at the end of our lines, saying nothing, waiting on a bite. It was great just to have the silence, occasionally broken by the sound of a train, clicking in time like a drummer, as it passed over the bridge.

We would have something simple to eat, Vegemite sandwiches and tea from a Thermos, to keep us going all night. It was like camping. We didn't have to talk much. We would sit
and stare into the water or up at the night sky. Every now and then Reg would think of something to tell me about one of his brothers or one of his cousins.

Reg used a language I wasn't used to. People we knew spoke Scots or would be swearing and slurring. But he'd say things like, ‘Tom was a real scallywag and Mum and Dad would scare the living Christ out of him and chase him with a switch.'

It was like he didn't speak English. In Scots that would have been, ‘Wee Tommy was a bit of a lad and his ma and da wid frighten the shite oot o' him, and skelp his arse wi' a stick.'

That would have made sense to me. So at the start, I would have to listen really carefully, just so I could understand him. But I just nodded along with him as if it was normal to me.

Mum used three or four voices. I used to think that they were just because she was insecure but I've since worked out that it was so she could be understood. The Scottish accent is hard to understand sometimes but the broad Glaswegian accent is almost impossible to catch unless you're used to it. Even then it can be hard, especially if someone is yelling at you.

So later on in life when we had a phone, I would hear Mum on the phone sounding like she had a plum in her mouth, saying things like, ‘Oh yes. I see what you mean. I will get onto that right away.'

We would all laugh and tell each other that Mum was pretending to be posh. But she was probably trying to get something done for the house, or paying a bill. She still uses that voice when she answers the phone to this day. I've heard it when I ring her.

Then there were times that she sounded like she was in the markets in Glasgow, swearing like a sailor, bagging Dad or someone else but laughing and sounding young. ‘Ma man is fuckin' useless, he's no like me, good at everythin'. Ha ha ha.'

In those times I could hardly understand her, but I was glad she was happy. A Glaswegian woman can sound as rough as guts if she gets wound up. It's frightening.

Mum had another voice that came out when we'd done something wrong. This voice was shrill and piercing and could peel the paint off walls. It sounded like a starving pterodactyl swooping down on a small furry animal that was too slow to keep up with its mum. When we heard that voice, it was time to leave the house by the back door as fast as we could.

‘Did you make this mess? I just cleaned this hoose. I'm goin' tae murder ye when I get ma hands on you, ya wee bastard.'

The last voice was soft and loving and made me think that everything would be all right. ‘You know I love you, my son of gold. I'm here so you don't have to worry.'

But I never heard that voice unless something drastic had happened.

There were days when I used to go down to the mudflats with a shovel and dig up these long slimy things called blood worms to use as bait. Then I'd sit on the old railway bridge and fish all day by myself and never feel lonely. Life was good. This was the same bridge that Grandpa used to fish off when he was young. And the same bridge that he taught Reg to fish from. Not that Reg was a great fisherman. By the time our worlds collided, he only went fishing because he knew I liked it.

I would catch tommy roughs and take them to Grandpa's house. He'd show me how to clean them and then he'd cook them up and we'd sit in the backyard and have a feast. I felt like Huckleberry Finn, living by the river, catching my own meals and needing no one. Well, I needed Grandpa to clean and cook them.

Grandpa used to give me slices of fruit cake with a cup of tea. He called it racecourse cake. Now, I used to just wolf it down
like any hungry young lad but after a few visits I had to ask him why he called it racecourse cake. He smiled at me and told me he'd do better than tell me, he'd show me.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and said, ‘All right, let's go and get some racecourse cake.'

I went on the bus with him and he didn't say where we were going or where we would find this fantastic cake. But I soon worked it out when we ended up at the racetrack. Now Grandpa wasn't a gambler; he wasn't one to waste money frivolously. Maybe he liked to look at the horses, who knows? But he took me to sit in the racecourse cafeteria and have a cup of tea. Guess what they served the tea with? That's right, fruit cake.

‘This is the best place in the world to get this cake,' he said. So that's what I've called it ever since – racecourse cake.

Grandpa had false top teeth that he never wore and he laughed all the time. He was a great guy to hang around with. I loved listening to him tell stories about the Port and how much it had changed over the years. He told me stories about fishing and about boats and ghosts and any other things he thought I would like.

He told me a yarn – that's what he called stories – about years earlier, when he had been out fishing in his boat. But first he sat down and lit a cigarette, breathed in a huge cloud of smoke then he began to talk.

‘Now I was out in my boat this day. It wasn't that big, maybe twenty feet long at the most and that was with the outboard motor.' Laughing and coughing out the smoke he had just sucked into his lungs. ‘I was at the channel marker about three miles off of Largs. Don't tell anyone about this place. It's one of my secret spots for catching sand whiting.' He gave me a knowing wink and a grin. ‘Well, I noticed a big bloody shark cruising around
and under my boat. I'd seen plenty of big sharks out there before; there are always loads of them. They cruise up and down the coast. So I wasn't that worried.'

He flicked the ash carefully off his cigarette; it floated down into the ashtray. ‘Now,' he continued, ‘the sun was setting and a full moon was coming up. She was lighting up the sky like a bloody beacon. I was sitting there alone in the boat, contemplating life. As you do.' He laughed again. ‘When I felt this bloody big bump. I nearly fell out of the boat. The bugger had come back and was after a taste of my boat.' He nervously sucked on his cigarette, as if it had all just happened.

‘I was a bit tired but suddenly my eyes were wide open and I could see everything that was in the water, big or small. As clear as day, I could see this bloody thing swimming around my boat. That's when I really started to worry.' A cloud of blue smoke fled his mouth and floated off into the sky. ‘Then there was a big splash and the bastard hit my boat even harder. Now I was panicking.'

He lowered his voice and looked at me as if he was trying to see if I was scared yet. ‘Suddenly –'

I jumped, he was almost shouting now.

‘This big bastard came up out of the water behind the boat. I tell you, against the night sky he looked massive. He lunged towards my boat with his mouth wide open and ripped the bloody outboard motor off.' He took another drag of his smoke. ‘If he was big enough to eat the motor I figured he was big enough to take down the whole bloody boat. I tried to keep calm and I slowly picked up my oars from the bottom of the boat and began rowing back to shore.'

If this was just a story, he had me sucked right in. ‘All the way back I was waiting for the bastard to come back for his second course, which I assumed would be me. But he left me alone. Probably didn't like the taste of the oily old motor. I made it to
shore in one piece, albeit in need of a new pair of underpants. Ha ha ha.' He coughed. ‘Next day my boat was up on the trailer at home and I found a couple of big teeth stuck into the hull. The bloody thing had tried to eat my boat.'