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‘The name has religious significance.’
‘We’re not religious.’ The woman unfolded her arms and took the baby from Colleen. ‘He’s a heavy little thing.’
‘He’s a healthy boy. Boys are more robust than girls. You should hear his lungs.’
‘His lungs disrupted my Debbie’s crowning. They couldn’t get him to pipe down. The sister was at her wits’ end.’
‘Frank Sinatra has fantastic lungs.’ Colleen crossed her arms.
‘Sinatra’s more of a crooner than a screamer.’
‘That’s just voice training. Julian’s got the right lungs. Lungs and personality. My boy’s got star quality.’
‘What a shame.’ The woman pointed to the baby’s mouth.
Colleen’s eyebrows shot skyward. ‘What a shame, what?’
‘He’s got a cupid’s bow.’
‘He’s a good-looking baby.’
‘Brigitte Bardot has a cupid’s bow but it’s a curse on a boy.’ The woman sucked air between her teeth. ‘Odd really. The father’s not French?’
‘My husband’s one hundred per cent Australian, a real man’s man. This is my second son. Two healthy boys.’ Colleen pointed to the baby’s top lip. ‘That’ll come right once he’s off the bottle.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘He’s really taken to the bottle. He’s a very strong sucker. All the nurses say so.’
‘I suppose that’s one good thing.’
‘Let me take him off your hands. Boys are heavy.’ Colleen reached out for the baby.
‘He’s quite pretty.’ The woman hesitated. ‘Like a little girl, really.’
‘That face is made for the small screen.’
The woman looked doubtful. ‘Possibly, but you’ll be forking out a fortune on voice training.’
‘Here, pass him over to me.’ Colleen yanked the baby out of her arms. ‘You need to rest up for your big operation on Tuesday.’
The woman gave a start.
‘I’m heading down to the TV room. The Dick Dingle Hour is on soon.’ Colleen eyed her opponent over the baby’s head. ‘May as well give the boy his first taste of culture.’
2 (#ulink_ab00b814-7653-5e3b-856c-f3a86ab5494b)
I was born in Ulverston, a small town on Tasmania’s north coast. I know all about my arrival at Blue Gum Central Hospital from my mother. She even told me how I was conceived. I could’ve done without that information but there’s no way to censor Mum. She’s always known what’s best for me. Ours is one of those exclusive mother-son relationships. We even look alike. Mum says we’re Black Irish which means we’re more attractive than the rest of the family. We have thick dark hair and green eyes. Dad and my siblings are the other kind of Irish: gingery with freckles. It’s not a good look.
It was Mum who bought me my first Celebrity Glitter magazine. It’s important to keep up, she says, star quality is not enough in the dog-eat-dog world of show business. Mum should know. She was the Tasmanian finalist in the Golden Microphone Contest and would’ve gone on to the nationals if disaster hadn’t struck. She still has the newspaper clipping in the back of her recipe book. Her hair is big and wide and she’s holding a bunch of dahlias next to a microphone. She looks beautiful – like Elizabeth Taylor, only thinner.
Mum calls me the Songbird of the South and says I’ll win trophies one day. If it’s not the Golden Microphone then it’ll be the Tassie Wallaby which is the highest entertainment award on Tasmanian television. Dick Dingle has won the Wallaby twice. He’s our local television icon and does a lot to promote Tasmanian youth. Mum says he will be promoting me one day. She says I’ve got small-screenability.
‘One day we’re going to see your big face on the cover of Celebrity Glitter magazine, Julian. You’re my own little star. Twinkle, twinkle.’ The magazine in her hands had Liberace’s face on the cover.
‘Is my face big, Mum?’
My father does not share my mother’s ambitions for me. I became aware of this at the age of four when I overheard a conversation from under our house in Kangaroo Crescent. We lived in a buff-coloured brick bungalow on a rectangular quarter-acre. The house sat on raised foundations which were hidden from view by a white weatherboard trim that skirted the bottom of the bricks. A trapdoor at the back provided crawling access to the area under the house. It was designed for plumbers and electricians but used exclusively by children.
It was my neighbour Raymond’s idea to crawl under there. He was two years older than me and should’ve known better. He should’ve known not to leave our clothes beside the trapdoor for my brother John to find. John had immediately alerted my father to our whereabouts. Raymond and I were directly under the dinette. I could hear the transistor and muffled voices. Someone switched off the radio and the voices of my mother and father became audible.
‘Jim, for goodness’ sake, they’re just little boys.’
‘Little boys? Colleen, they are naked underneath this house, probably under our very feet.’
I heard the shuffling of Dad’s leather-soled shoes on the linoleum above me.
‘I know exactly where this sort of thing leads and I don’t want a Catholic priest in the family. No thank you very much.’
‘Jim, he’s four years old.’
‘Exactly. We’ve got to put a stop to this right now. If it’s not a priest then we’ll have a hairdresser on our hands. Or a male nurse.’
‘A hairdresser would be handy.’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Hairdressing.’
‘No, your brother Norman. I don’t want his type fluffing up the cushions on my settee.’
‘Don’t be awful.’
‘The man’s as straight as a dog’s hind leg.’
‘Norman’s got a thriving salon in Melbourne. He’s not interested in our cushions.’
‘It would only start with the cushions. Next thing you know he’d be teaching our boys to play leapfrog.’
‘What’s wrong with leapfrog?’
‘There’s a lot wrong with it if you do it without trousers.’
‘Give it a rest.’
‘Not until I sort that Julian out.’
I heard the door slam and then my mother’s footsteps cross the lino. My father’s voice boomed out near the trapdoor.
‘Julian. Come out immediately.’
My father was a stout man but perfectly capable of squeezing under the house and dragging me out. Raymond and I scrambled to the trapdoor where Dad was waiting with our clothes. He handed them to us and stood with his arms rigid at his sides and his head turned away while we dressed. When we were done, he grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward him. The shorts I’d just put on were yanked down and I was smacked several times on the bum with his bare hand. Raymond didn’t get touched.
I pointed to my neighbour. ‘What about Raymond?’
Raymond’s lips parted in horror.
‘Shut up!’ Dad didn’t look at Raymond. His face was red and glistening with sweat.
‘But he’s older.’ I jabbed a finger angrily at Raymond who backed away.
‘Shut up!’ Dad reached out and smacked me again. ‘Never let me catch you with a naked boy again or there’ll be trouble.’
He smacked me several more times. I nodded yes with each smack. I promised I would never ever let him catch me again as long as I lived.
I managed to keep my promise until I was eight.
Dad had built us a fort in the backyard out of some old timber and corrugated iron he’d been given by Trevor Bland. This was completely out of character and something he never attempted again. My father generally didn’t invest time in projects that weren’t directly connected to his personal comfort. He wasn’t the type of father to take his kids fishing or help us with homework. He did things like give us bottles of raspberry drink while we waited in the car outside the pub. This was one gesture I appreciated. Some kids weren’t given drinks. We’d poke out red tongues and wave our soft drinks at them while they died of thirst in their Holden station wagons.
It was a war game that got me into trouble. The boys next door were the Allies and we were supposed to be the Germans. I told my brother John I didn’t want any part of it. I’d only heard bad things about Germans. They were swine.
‘I want to be a nurse.’
‘You can’t be a nurse, stupid.’ John sneered at me. ‘Nurses are girls.’ He laughed out loud and began dancing around me, chanting. ‘Julian’s a woolly woofter. Julian’s a woolly woofter.’
The other boys sniggered.
‘I’m a nurse. I’ll do bandages in the hospital.’ I pointed to the fort. The boys turned to admire Dad’s construction. It was the only one in the street. Everyone loved our fort. It gave us the edge.
‘We need bandages if we’re shot.’ It was little Johnny Hawkins from next door. There were five Johns on our street. It was a very popular name in Ulverston.
Eyes turned to my brother. He was the oldest.
‘OK, you can do bandages in the fort, but you’re a doctor.’ John was as proud of the fort as the next Corkle.
‘I’m a nurse.’ I shouted this over my shoulder.
My first patient was my brother. He came inside grimacing and dragging his leg. ‘Za Brits shot me srew za knee.’
I pointed to the pretty makeshift bed I’d created out of the couch cushions. These were laid out in a line under the sheets I’d hung in a decorative way from the ceiling. It was great to have a fort but having a fort with flair made all the difference.
I put some vinegar on a piece of cotton wool and rubbed around the area where there was supposed to be a wound. John groaned like a wounded soldier. I used the hard plastic snout of the vacuum cleaner to examine the wound. John had his eyes closed and was moaning.
‘I have to get the bullet out.’ Taking a stick I’d found under the plum tree, I drove it in hard under the kneecap.
‘Fuck!’ John had screamed the F word. ‘You fucking bastard.’
‘It’s just a flesh wound.’ I jumped out of the fort and stood on the grass below. I called up to John who was rocking on his back, cradling his knee to his chest. ‘If you hit me I’ll tell Mum you said the F word, twice.’
My next patient was little Johnny Hawkins. He came in doubled over saying he’d been shot in the stomach. I made him lie on his back.
‘Take your shirt off. It’s covered in blood.’ Johnny was no stranger to this game. We often played together in his garage. I undid the zip of his shorts and had just pulled them off when I heard someone outside. I knew it was my brother. He wanted to get me back for the knee job.
‘Piss off, you German bastard. I’m not finished with this John.’
The door flew open and my father stuck his head and shoulders into the fort. He looked at Johnny’s naked body, then at me, then at Johnny again. Johnny’s underpants were in my hand.
‘I’m a nurse, Dad.’
My father reached in and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me outside where I was smacked in front of the other boys. He then marched me to the bedroom I shared with John and told me to stay there until dinnertime. I watched from the window as he cleared out the fort and then went at it with an axe and hammer. It took him an hour to reduce it to a pile of splintered timber. I was crying as he loaded everything on to a trailer and drove away.
A couple of days later I saw Mum rummaging in the cupboard where she kept the cleaning things. She then did a room-to-room search, looking under beds and furniture. She was flushed when she came back to the kitchen.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’
‘I must be going mad. I can’t find the extension to the vacuum cleaner. The little plastic end bit. I’ve looked everywhere.’
John took the loss of the fort hard and refused to talk to me for a full month. This was fine by me because I was busy preparing for the end of year pantomime at St Kevin’s. Mum was thrilled. I was to play Joseph which was a much bigger speaking role than baby Jesus who only got to gurgle. My sister Carmel was recruited to work the pulleys and change the backdrops. Several boys had wanted this job but they were no match for my sister who at the age of nine could already run faster and punch harder than anyone I knew.
My stage debut would have been a triumph if Brother O’Hare had not torn the veil off my head at the last minute. It was Mum’s navy blue chiffon scarf and looked fantastic with the pale blue caftan I’d been given to wear. O’Hare had wanted a bareheaded Joseph but this made no sense when the Three Kings had fancy headgear. He’d stopped me in the wings, insisting that a nativity scene was no place for a lady’s scarf. My cue came and went as I was trying to argue my point. By the time we noticed, Mary and the donkey had been waiting on stage for a full minute. She might have stayed there longer if a familiar male voice had not boomed out over the audience.
‘Move that ass!’ Dad thought he was a funny man.
The laughter spurred Brother O’Hare into action. I was thrust from behind and propelled across the stage, running with my head down as I struggled to get my footing. I heard the laughter even before I hit the donkey head-on and broke it in two. Mary toppled off and fell to the side with a squawk and a thud. The audience roared. The hindquarters of the donkey turned and lunged at me. It was Robbie Skint and, despite the handicap of his donkey leggings, he lunged very fast. The audience roared again as he tackled me and clasped his hands around my neck.
I was gasping for air and twisting my head to free myself when my eyes fell on Carmel. She was standing in the back holding a rope above her head. With a smile she let it go. The backdrop of the stable scene unfurled at high speed and hit Robbie’s head with a bonk.
3 (#ulink_9ae51405-f61e-59e1-82b5-08d6b543b6d4)
At the start of the new school year, I was given a seat next to Paula Stromboli. I was the only boy in the class who had no desire to sit next to old Smelly Pants. She was very bold for a girl of eight. I’d heard all about her and didn’t want to go anywhere near her cotton tops.
Brother O’Hare had written a line from a psalm on the blackboard: ‘Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer.’ Our job was to copy it into our exercise books with as much precision as possible. Erasers were not allowed. The task was one of concentration. I’d done a brilliant job and was up to the ‘prayer’ bit when Paula grasped my knee and squeezed. My leg shot up and banged the bottom of the desk, causing my hand to leap forward with the pencil. I finished the word but it now read, ‘Hear my cry, O God, listen to my player.’ I looked at it for a while. There was no way to repair the damage without an eraser. The clock was ticking. I wedged a small V before ‘player’ and wrote the word ‘record’ above it. At least it now made sense.
‘You think you’re funny, don’t you, Corker.’ O’Hare had gripped my shoulder and was digging his fingers into the flesh.
The other children were looking at me.
‘It’s Corkle, sir. I was just trying to—’
‘—be the class clown. Corker, you’ll stay here during lunchtime and write out the entire psalm.’
Paula squeezed my knee again as Brother O’Hare turned back to the blackboard. I twisted in my seat, ready to drive a pencil into her thigh, but stopped with my hand in mid-air. She had lifted her dress and pulled down her knickers. I was staring at a bare pink mound. I looked up at Paula’s face. She was smiling, oblivious to the frightening non-event in her underpants. It was bad enough watching men and women kiss on television but to have the Stromboli mound at my elbow was more than I could stand. I turned to the front and put up my hand, waving it about until I got the brother’s attention.
‘Yes, Corker.’
The class laughed.
‘It’s Corkle, sir.’
