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I worked my way through the first plate of savouries and then went back for another of crumbed chicken pieces and spaghetti. By the third round I was feeling gassy and hot. The SlimQuik was tight inside my clothes. Carmel heard domes pop as I got up a fourth time. She pinched her nose and made a waving motion with her other hand. ‘Ugh, not in the public sphere.’
I filled the fourth plate with beef curry and rice. It was a ridiculous choice. I didn’t like beef curry any more than I liked Irish stew. I ate it anyway.
Little rivers of sweat were running from under my arms when I started in on the apple sponge and chocolate cake. By now the suit had ripped open underneath my clothes. I didn’t care. I just had to make enough room for a chocolate éclair and a helping of pavlova and then I’d be done.
I swallowed the last spoonful of pavlova and put the bowl on top of the stack of empty plates in front of me. I felt bloated and carsick. Complete calm was the only cure. I just wanted it all to end and to go home.
The family was still eating when a man came up to the table and spoke to Dad. ‘I’d like to have a word with you, sir, away from the other paying customers.’
Dad got up and followed him. When he returned, his face was an angry red grimace. He didn’t sit down.
‘What’s the matter, Jim?’ Mum was brushing crumbs off the tablecloth in front of me.
‘We’re going. Some family discount they have here! That idiot just asked me to pay full price for Julian.’
Dad’s eyes fell on me. I tried to sink lower in my chair but the interior of the sweat suit was slick with sweat. The suit and my clothes remained upright on the chair while I slipped down inside them. The suit made a squeaking sound as my skin rubbed against the plastic. Carmel aimed an elbow at my ribs but hit my shoulder.
‘He said Julian ate four plates of mains. I told him to shove his buffet up his bum. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
‘But, Dad, I haven’t had dessert yet and it’s my birthday.’ John’s voice was a sickening whine.
Dad shook his head. We were leaving. John shot me a dangerous look. I knew by the look that I’d get hell later but I was in too much discomfort to care. I burped and tasted pavlova and beef curry in the back of my mouth.
As soon as we got home, I rushed into the bathroom and locked the door. I tore off all my clothes and removed the SlimQuik. It had ripped from the crotch to halfway up the back but I didn’t care. It felt wonderful to be free of it. I pulled out the bathroom scales and stood on them naked, holding my breath. I’d been wearing the damned suit for an entire day and deserved some weight loss as compensation. The scales indicated I was two and a half kilograms heavier. I got off, wound back the little arm a few notches and then got back on. There, I was just under my regular weight.
8 (#ulink_7dd64c42-3184-558d-a671-581394ec9d99)
It was one thing to have love handles bulging over the top of my shorts but it was quite another to overhear my father referring to me as a podge. Podge? I stopped in my tracks. I’d been on my way to the fridge to get cheese for a sandwich.
‘That little podge eats like a horse and watches too much TV. It’s not natural for a boy of his age. He should be outside playing not watching Dick Dingle on the box.’
Dad was sitting in front of the box talking to Mum as she ran a duster over the porcelain. He couldn’t see me in the dinette because his eyes were fixed on the All Blacks who were getting pounded into mincemeat by the South Africans. The New Zealand rugby tour of apartheid South Africa had stirred up a hornet’s nest on the pages of The Bugle. Dad didn’t want to miss a minute of it.
‘When was the last time you did any physical exercise?’ Mum’s hand had stopped moving. Her duster was hovering over the Royal Albert teapot.
‘I’m not eleven years old.’
‘No, you and that Trevor Bland act more like five-year-olds.’ Mum let the duster fall and put her hands on her hips. ‘Not all boys were made for sports. Julian has other talents. He’s sensitive and original.’
‘I’ve heard that before about you-know-who.’
‘Leave Norm out of this.’ She leaned over and waved a hand in front of Dad’s face, forcing him to look at her. ‘You know what you are, James Corkle? A big, fat, bigoted, beer-swilling sports dag.’
‘Sports dag? You can’t call me a sports dag.’
I should’ve left the dinette right then but I was riveted by the scene that had just unfolded before me. As Dad stood to confront my mother, he noticed me out of the corner of his eye. I heard him yell as I scurried for the back door. When he caught up with me I was near the plum tree. His face was red and his eyes were blazing. I knew he wanted to wallop me but he didn’t have a justifiable crime, especially with Mum watching from the back step.
His eyes narrowed and a smile appeared. The next thing I knew, he’d put Carmel’s cricket bat in my hand. It wasn’t fair but no court of law in Tasmania was going to convict a father of cruelty for making his son play cricket. Mum gave a sympathetic shrug and went back inside.
I was made to stand with my back to the tree and told to hit hard and high. Dad rubbed the ball on his trouser leg, put it to his lips, blew on it, and then bowled it in my direction. The next thing I knew I was on my back gasping for air. The cricket ball had hit me in the middle of the chest and thrown me on my back.
‘Did you just close your eyes?’ Dad was standing over me.
‘Yes.’ Honesty was the best policy when it came to my father.
‘You idiot.’
‘I mean no.’ I changed my mind. Honesty was definitely not the best policy. Flattery was. ‘You throw just like Stan McCabe.’
‘I can’t believe your stupidity. I could’ve killed you.’ Dad cared. He really did.
‘I mean I did close them.’
‘Your mother would have had a fit. Why in God’s name did you close your frigging eyes?’
‘The ball was blurry.’ For some insane reason, there was the truth again.
Dad’s head tilted to the side. He was paying attention. It encouraged me.
‘You, too, Dad. When you stand over there by the fence, your edges go all fluffy like Doris Day on TV.’
This description had an immediate impact. I was grabbed by the shoulder and marched into the kitchen where my mother was peeling potatoes. She looked at me and frowned. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Colleen, the boy’s afflicted. His eyes are buggered. I’ll have to see old Dent.’
Dr Dent was one of my father’s co-drinkers. They met nearly every night down at the King’s Arms with Trevor Bland to hash over meaningless topics like cricket and football. Dent was Dad’s idea of good medicine. The doctor had a speech problem which prevented him from asking too many questions or giving much medical advice. His small, unpopular practice was located above the Whipper Snapper fish-and-chip shop in the centre of town.
My mother held up three fingers. ‘How many fingers, Julian?’
‘Two.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with his eyes. Apart from their gorgeous green colour.’
This was my mother being funny. She smiled at me. I almost smiled back but stopped myself. I’d always wanted glasses and couldn’t allow humour to jeopardise this opportunity.
Yves Saint Laurent wore glasses and he was an actual French fashion designer from France. Everyone recognised Yves by his thick dark glasses. They were his signature, and all the big stars had a signature. Elizabeth Taylor had the Cartier diamond. Gladys had her icebreakers and Liberace, who had made another dazzling tour of Australia, had his candelabra.
Dent must’ve been a real doctor at one stage because he had a brass plaque on his door. The grubby waiting room was furnished with three vinyl chairs and an Aussiemica table. The ashtray on the table was full. There was no receptionist and obviously no cleaner.
‘G-g-g-g’day, Jim.’
Dent held out his hand to my father. He was a short man with an oily scalp encircled by a strip of grey hair. I immediately thought of Louis Pasteur. Pasteur’s discovery of bacteria and its destruction by boiling was one of Brother Duffy’s favourite subjects. Dent’s lab coat had grime around the buttonholes and along the pocket edges. It was asking to be boiled.
‘G-g-g-g’day, Dent.’ My father copied his friend’s stutter and then laughed at himself.
Dent didn’t seem to mind. He listened to Dad with a vacant smile before going ahead with the examination. After putting me through the eye chart, he brought over a huge pair of black test frames and told me to put them on. The eye circles were like cogs and had numbered notches around the edges. Dad spluttered with laughter.
‘Don’t I know you? You’re Brains from Thunderbirds. No, hang on, you’re Mr Magoo.’
It was awful to be teased by my father because I was forbidden to retaliate. I could’ve come up with some extremely funny names for him, like Phar Lap or Lassie, but name-calling was a one-way street with Dad.
The frames had grooves on the sides for inserting test lenses. Dent selected two lenses with his nicotine-stained fingers and slipped them into the grooves.
‘H-h-h-how’s that?’
‘Still blurry.’
He added more lenses.
‘B-b-b-better or w-w-w-worse?’
It wasn’t only better; it was brilliant. The lower letters on the eye chart had clearly defined edges. A thrill went through me. It was like finding a ten-dollar note on the footpath.
‘B-b-b-better.’ I should’ve turned around before I tried any funny business. The Magoo glasses would’ve provided an excellent view of my father striding across the room towards me. The smack across the back of my head made the lenses rattle inside the frames.
‘That’s enough.’
‘But you talked like—’
‘I said that’s enough!’
Dent put a hand up. ‘J-J-J-James, your boy’s sh-sh-sh-short-sighted. H-h-h-he probably can’t r-r-r-read the blackboard at sc-sc-sc-school.’
The doctor wrote out a lens prescription and arranged to meet Dad at the pub later. We drove in silence to the optometrist. Dad must’ve been thinking about what Dent had said and was unusually kind when we reached the shop. He told me I could choose any pair of frames I wanted. It was like being told I could have the best callipers money could buy. I trawled the racks several times, finally narrowing the choice down to two models. My heart said yes to a pair of blue frames with gold rivets on the sides. These were the signature candelabra of fashion frames. Another part of me, the part that read Celebrity Glitter, said yes to simple black plastic frames, not unlike the signature spectacles of Yves Saint Laurent. I showed Dad the two options.
He raised his eyebrows and jabbed a finger at the blue frames. ‘Put those back on the ladies’ rack, right this minute!’
Mum said I needed a signature tune to go with my trademark frames. I sang her Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ as we drove to the optometrist to pick up the glasses, stretching out the last ‘waaaaay’ until my voice disappeared for lack of air. We were both excited about my new style accessories. Mum agreed they’d give my face a certain something. I told her that certain something was ‘Je ne sais quoi’. That’s what all the stars had, according to Celebrity Glitter.
The woman behind the counter was chewing something when we entered the shop and seemed irritated by our arrival. She located my glasses on a shelf under the counter and jerked them out of their case. As she handed them to Mum I realised with horror I’d made a big mistake. They were not Yves Saint Laurent. The frames were too circular and chunky for Yves. The lenses were thick and convex. The overall effect was like a party novelty, the sort of thing that went with a plastic nose and moustache.
‘Mum, my eyes have cleared up. I think we should get our money back.’
‘What? Now you’d prefer a white stick or Labrador?’ She laughed and elbowed me.
I didn’t smile back. The situation was critical. I couldn’t accept novelty glasses. I wanted to be a celebrity, not a clown.
‘I didn’t want to tell you this, Mum, but last Sunday I looked at the statue of Mary in Our Lady of Miracles. She was crying real tears. Then suddenly I could see everything perfectly. Even those little hairs inside Father McMahon’s nose.’
My mother shuddered. ‘Why don’t you just try them on, Julian.’
The woman behind the counter sniffed with impatience. She wasn’t interested in Christian miracles. She was as hard as they came, probably Protestant. I was going to tell my mother as much as soon as we got our money back and left the premises.
Mum slipped the glasses over my nose and tucked the arms behind my ears. I blinked and gasped in surprise. A rack of Albert Tatlock frames came into view. So did a poster behind the woman. It wasn’t a scene of Japanese maple leaves but an aerial photo of the Disney castle in Bavaria. Turning, I looked out of the shop window and saw a small dog lift its leg against a tyre. A woman walked past pulling a wailing child by the arm. It was magic. I could see everything in detail. I looked back at the saleswoman and noticed a wiry mole on her neck. On the bench behind her was a half-eaten sandwich. In the mirror, I could see someone in a shamrock-green T-shirt wearing big black glasses. It was me and I looked like Nana Mouskouri. My heart sank.
‘So, do they make a difference?’ My mother had her hands extended in front of her. She did this when she was going to adjust my shirt or give my hair a ruffle. Her head was tilted to one side.
‘Not one bit.’ I tapped the lens with a fingernail. ‘Total waste of money.’
The saleswoman snapped the glasses’ case closed and handed it to my mother with the prescription. ‘We don’t do returns on prescription glasses. A lot of work’s gone into grinding those lenses.’ She pointed to me. ‘Very necessary with the sort of eyes your boy’s got.’
My mother’s head jerked back to upright position. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my son’s eyes.’
It was a ridiculous response but my mother did this when I was under threat. It was one of the things I liked most about her. Mum’s hand landed between my shoulder blades and I was propelled out into the real world, a world that suddenly had shapes and textures. I left the glasses on as we drove home. They made me feel disoriented and dizzy, but the thrill of being able to see was worth the carsickness. I could read names on letterboxes and see merchandise in shop windows.
‘You know who those glasses remind me of?’ Mum knew I was disappointed.
‘I hate myself and want to die.’
‘Roy Orbison.’
‘That cheers me up.’
‘Sammy Davis Jr has black frames, too, and he’s part of the Rat Pack.’
‘He’s the smallest member.’
‘Don’t forget Rolf Harris.’
‘You’re not cheering me up.’
‘Norman had glasses when he was your age.’
Mum pulled up at traffic lights next to the Whipper Snapper fish-and-chip shop. I was looking at people waiting in cars when my heart skipped a beat. Elizabeth Taylor was sitting in the passenger seat of an orange Chrysler Valiant! There was even something sparkly around her neck. It had to be the Cartier. I waved. She waved back. The lights changed and my mother put her foot down. I was about to tell Mum when I saw David Niven heading toward us in an old Vauxhall. I took the glasses off and rubbed my eyes.
A letter from the United States of America was waiting for me when I got home.
Dear Fan and Friend,
We’re delighted by your interest in the official Liz Taylor International Fan Club. You’re one of thousands of fans around the world following Liz’s sparkling career.
Full membership in the official Liz Taylor fan club is just ten American dollars per year. For this nominal fee you receive a fan-club badge and certificate. Naturally, you also get our quarterly Liz Taylor fanzine, Liz, Camera, Action!
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Don’t forget to include your money order for club membership.
Yours truly,
Barbara Bushel
President of the official Liz Taylor International Fan Club
The envelope contained a studio photo of a young Liz Taylor with her arm around a dog’s neck. There was also a quote from one of her movies: ‘“It’s a very odd feeling – to be someone’s God.” Liz Taylor as Kathie Merrick in The Courage of Lassie.’
9 (#ulink_8b70eb1d-d8d8-5f68-9397-2f209f8f982e)
Mum and Dad were having money problems. Dad said his problem was having to support a moaning wife and three thankless children. Mum said the problem was his having to support his drinking and horse-racing habits. She went out one day and got herself a job on the production line at the Tassie Textiles factory. We were each given a set of keys to the back door and warned not to let strange men or brush salesmen into the house.
