10. The gaol of my boyhood

“I’m going to plead guilty,” I said, looking Mr. Counter straight in the eye. The lawyer he brought along answered, “no you’re not!”

“But you said you didn’t do it,” said Mr. Counter.

“No, I said I didn’t know if I did it or not, there’s a difference, Mr. Counter.”

“You’ve only been at uni a few weeks and you’re already sounding like a smart ass,” said Mr. Counter. He was not happy.

“You understand,” the lawyer said, “that you could get the death penalty for this?”

“So what? Iris is dead, so what’s left?”

“You’re not thinking straight,” said Mr. Counter, “anyway, she’s not dead.”

“Then where is she, then? If she’s not dead, she’s run away and I’ll never see her again. I searched for her everywhere. She doesn’t exist.”

“She what?’ asked the lawyer, obviously thinking I had gone a bit loco.

“I searched all the government archives. There’s no record of her birth or death in Victoria.”

Mr. Counter made a little cough. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, because I was hoping Iris would show up here and tell you what’s been going on.”

“Yair? Go on then. I can take it.”

“She’s been sleeping in your room at the pub.”

“Fuckn hell!” I muttered to myself. I couldn’t believe my ears. “She’s what?”

“Abbie is convinced she’s been getting into your room, her usual way through the window, and sleeping there off and on.”

“For how long?”

“Nearly a week. Abbie didn’t say when she first noticed it.”

I put my head between my hands and tried to think. I needed Grimesy or Kate here to tell me what was going on, what to do. We all fell silent. I could feel the heat coming out of Mr. Counter’s ears. He’d come here to help me, got me a lawyer and everything, and I was acting like a shit-head. Mr. Counter coughed again.

“Mr. Counter. I’m sorry, I’m being a bastard. Thanks for all you’re doing…”

“There’s a bit more,” he said.

“About Iris?”

“No. I went looking for you. I went to see your mum on the off-chance you’d gone there to stay while you settled in at uni.” Mr. Counter gave the lawyer a look, and the lawyer excused himself and left.

“So, this is between you and me?” I asked.

“Yes. If I don’t tell you now, there may be no other chance, and the crazy way you’re thinking you could damage yourself and those who love you in ways we can’t imagine.”

“Only Iris loves me. Who else? Nobody.”

“There’s me,” said Mr. Counter slowly, “there’s me.”

“Gees, Mr. Counter, I meant like love-love, you know?”

“Yes, I know. And there’s your mum.”

“Bitch. She ran out on me and my Dad.”

“That was a long time ago. You could have gone with her, she wanted you to, you remember that, I hope.”

“Yes. I do. I was sitting in the kitchen doing an exercise in my Latin For Today book. She used to help me with it. I looked up to ask her to hear my vocab, and there she was, standing in the doorway, her bag packed, and auntie Connie hanging around behind her like a bad smell. Mum was crying and she had dark rings around her eyes, they looked like they were bruises. But my Dad swore he never touched her, and I believed him.”

“She didn’t just up and leave. She’d talked about it for weeks, even months. It was when your Dad was starting in on the metho. There was no money to feed you, pay for your school stuff. I tried to help her as best I could. She just felt used up and it broke her heart when you wouldn’t go with her. And…”

“Then she should have stayed, shouldn’t she?”

“She couldn’t stand watching you turn into him.”

“A fuckn alky?”

“Well, we know now that you very nearly did, didn’t you? And your mum heard all about your drinking after your dad died, and she blamed it on me for taking you in.”

“Gees, Mr. Counter, that’s not fair.” Silence, and then I said, “what were you going to say before?”

“Well, your mum and I, we had an argument when I went to see her. As I said, she blamed me. But there’s more to tell.”

“Yes, I know. You had the hots for her and you probably had an affair, that’s why you got angry with me when I kind of said so in front of Mrs. Counter that time.”

“That’s not quite right. I did have the hots for her, and we should have got married years ago. Your mum liked both of us, your dad and me, but I know she loved me more.”

“So she married him, and you kept chasing her?”

“No. But we were together right up to her wedding, in fact she was pregnant before the wedding, which is the reason she rushed into getting married.”

“So why did she choose him?”

“To this day I don’t really know. All I can say is that at the time I didn’t have a job to speak of. I was doing odd jobs, and your Dad he had a really good job down at the Phosphate plant. So I s’pose that’s why she chose him.”

“Gees, Mr. Counter. I don’t understand you people. So why did you marry Mrs. Counter then?”

“Because I wanted to get married and have a family and she came along and looked just the right one that could have lots of kids.”

“She doesn’t look like that now.”

“Nah. She’d had an abortion one time and something went wrong, so she couldn’t have any more. I was fucked, as you like to say.”

“So mum got married and had me, so end of story?”

“Not quite.” Mr. Counter shifted in his seat. The copper outside opened the door peered in, sick of waiting for us to finish. There were no windows in the room. Just a table and a couple of chairs for visitors. I wasn’t even handcuffed.

“So, what? What is it that you don’t want to tell me?”

“That’s just it. I do want to tell you, but I’m scared you’ll go nuts or something.”

“Mr. Counter. You know I would never touch you. You’ve been great to me. I say cruel things to you sometimes but I don’t mean them. You know that.”

“I’m not sure I do. But here goes.” Mr. Counter took a deep breath and gulped. “There’s every chance I’m actually your dad,” he mumbled.

“You mean, my real dad? You mean I’ve been talking in my head to the wrong fuckn bloke all this time? I sat with some stranger holding his hand, helping him to die? And all this time you’re my real dad, and not, not, that fuckn alky I thought was my Dad?”

Mr. Counter looked down, then gradually raised his eyes to look at me. He was embarrassed, that’s what he was. Kate would be proud of me perceiving that. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him though.

“I wouldn’t quite put it like that. But yes, that’s what it was,” he admitted.

“You fuckn shithead asshole! You let me go on like that, even get stuck into the booze so I would keep on thinking he was my Dad, when all the time you were the bloke behind the scenes pulling the strings?”

“Your dad and me. We were best friends even when he married your mum, and I never touched her all those years. And we stayed best friends all those years.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You can ask your mum.”

“Fuck her!”

“I don’t think you mean that. If you reached out to her, I think she’d come and see you.”

“How do you really know I’m yours?”

“You got my blood type, which is rare and neither she or your Dad had it.”

I found myself staring at him, trying to figure out if I looked like him or not.

“But the wavy, curly brown hair? You don’t have that?”

“I do, but I keep it cut down to a crew cut, always have. And now it’s got a bit of grey in it too.”

“OK. Now I get it. My mum. She fell for your hair. That’s what the sheilas like, don’t they?”

“I don’t know, James. I don’t know.”

“So, did Dad, I mean, did whoever he was, know I was your kid?”

“No. We never told him. He would have been devastated. He thought the world of you, wanted the best for you. But the booze got in the way.”

Mr. Counter stood up with his arms folded. I knew what he wanted. I slowly rose and we both waited for something to happen. But it was Mr. Counter who moved first. He came around the table with his arms stretched out. “All these years,” he said, “I’ve never hugged you, not even when you were little. But I wanted to so badly.” The tears in his eyes, they just about made me collapse. He really meant it. It was all true. I could hear Kate telling me that this was the big moment, that I should go forward and hug him too.

And I did.

*

Connie and Vi sat across from each other in the living room. The blinds on each side were drawn, the lace curtains at the front pulled together, allowing a fractured view to the street. Connie had got out her best china and was placing the cups and saucers on the lace covered coffee table. Vi sat upright, clad in a dull green dress, plain, decorated with a small brooch that Eddie had given her so many years ago, her black leather handbag sitting in her lap. Connie had got out her best china for the occasion for it felt like there was something to celebrate, the past absorbed to the present, a feeling that lost baggage had at last been found. The light clinking of the china as she poured the tea invoked com-forting memories of past cups of tea, a little milk, no sugar, and a tea strainer.

“He’ll be here in twenty minutes or so,” said Connie.

“Shall I get some biscuits?” asked Vi.

“I doubt he’ll want any. Beer drinkers, you know.”

“I suppose so.” Vi sat uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa. “Connie?” she said, “I’ve never thanked you for taking me in, not properly.”

“You know that’s not necessary. You’re my sister and I love you, and it wasn’t your fault that your husband turned out how he did.”

“But I did choose him, and it should have been Eddie.”

“We don’t need to go over all that again. What we have to do now is try to get James to understand.”

“He was a lovely little boy, you know, Connie.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I should never have left him.”

“You had no choice. It would have killed you if you’d stayed. We both know that. And he would have hated you all the more, because you were the bad one that was always having to tell him what to do.”

“I suppose you’re right. But leaving him with that drunk. May¬be he hates me more for it.”

“No, Vi! No! The life his father led him into, then Eddie too…”

“I know I blamed Eddie, but he tried to save James, I see that now. James would have been out of control without Eddie after his father died.”

“Well, you know what I think about that. Eddie was thinking of himself first. He just wanted the boy with him. But we can’t go over all that again. We had it out with Eddie last time. What’s done is done.”

“I suppose so.”

They both fell into an awkward silence. Connie sipped her tea, looking out at her sister over her tea cup. Vi looked into her cup. There were no tea leaves, no fortune to be told. They waited in silence until at last the lumbering Humber pulled up in front of the house. Eddie came to the door.

“Eddie, we’re almost ready. Come in for a cuppa,” smiled Connie as she opened the door.

“I won’t stay, thanks. Got the missus in the car.”

Connie peered into the car, beckoning Mrs. Counter who wound down the window, her hat getting in the way as she put her head out to reply.

“Oh, we won’t stay, thank you. Eddie has a lot of work to do at the pub.”

“Oh, please. Just for a few secs, stretch your legs and all that.”

Mrs. Counter smiled, the heavy powdered nose crimping a little, “Oh all right then. I’ll just come in for a quickie and a visit to the loo.”

Two more cups of tea were poured and they all sat in silence, comforted by the clinking of china and sipping of tea.

There were no biscuits and the ride back in the lumbering Humber down to Geelong took forever in a silence not golden, instead coloured by the dark grey of the You Yangs.

*

The brat was sleeping in the corner of the kitchen, curled up like a dog. There was a rope tied around her ankle and the other end tied to the tap in the kitchen sink. The brat’s foot looked blue and there were red marks around her ankle where she had strained against the rope, trying to get loose. Flo sat in her usual place at the laminex table, smoking her Garricks. She wasn’t staring into nothing though. She was reading her bible, reading it out loud:

“…when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us…”

The screen door bursts open and Tank’s big body stands over the brat. “What the fuckn hell are you doing?” he yells.

Flo continues:

“… for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter…”

Tank grabs her bible and flings it across the kitchen. “You stupid fuckn bitch!” he screams, “look at the brat’s fuckn foot. It’s gone blue, you’re gunna cripple her!”

“You should fuckn talk!”

Tank leans down to undo the rope, but just as he does, the brat wakes up and screeches in a high-pitched voice and grabs at Tank’s face, scratching his cheeks, and blood starts oozing out and trickling down to his mouth.

“Serves you fuckn right,” says Flo, “…whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed…”

Tank loosens the rope and detaches it from the tap. Then with the knotted end, he whips it down on the table. The brat screeches some more, and Flo’s eyelids flicker a little. She takes a draw of her Garrick and steels herself. Tank grabs the brat and whips the knotted rope down hard on the table, this just missing Flo’s hand as she flicked the ash of her cigarette into the ashtray.

“Go on, then. Get it out of you. You can do all you want. I deserve it, I know. And I’ll leave it to the Lord to deal with you, because only He knows just how much you deserve.”

Tank’s arm freezes above his head, he has the brat in a headlock with his other arm, her jaw clamped shut so she can’t scream. Flo wants to be beaten, and he wants to do it, but because she wants him to he won’t. He throws the rope into the kitchen sink and turns to go back out, still holding the brat who scratches and pulls trying to get out of the headlock.

“That’s right. Run away!” mutters Flo.

“What did you fuckn say?”

“You heard.”

“Fuck you!” But he did not leave.

“Are you going to let that boy hang for what you did?” cried Flo.

“Did what?”

“Oh Lord! Give me patience to deal with this idiot!” she calls, looking up to the fly-spotted ceiling. “You killed, her, didn’t you? On one of your visits. You gave her money then you killed her.”

“What kind of a bloke do you think I am, you fuckn whore?”

“Nah, she’s the whore and that’s what you like. In one of your fits of rage you fucked her and killed her with a beer bottle, of all the fuckn disgusting things.”

“I wasn’t even there that night.”

“Yair, that’s what you say. But the Brat, she saw you there. You was there with the boy, what’s his name?”

“Chooka. But I wasn’t there, for Christ sake.”

“She saw you, blood all down your front. That’s what she told me.”

“Where’s Linda, then. She must have been there too if the Brat was there. She’ll tell you I wasn’t there.”

“You went there after we came back from the hospital. You was steamed up. I know. I told you not to go.”

“You fuckn did not.”

“I told Jesus to stop you. I prayed hard to stop you.”

“Did the brat say anything to the cops?”

“Yair, except that she said she saw Chooka.”

“So she didn’t see me then?”

“So you was there?”

“Fuck you! Are you a fuckn detective now?”

“Linda said the cops got the brat scared and she just said the first name that came into her head. Because you know, she likes that boy.”

“The fuckn shit of a kid, just like her fuckn mother. I’ll talk sense into this fuckn little shit.” He tightens the headlock. The brat squirms.

“Yair, I s’pose this is your idea of talking to her? You fuckn murdering bastard!”

Tank clenched his fists, the brat bit his hand, but he didn’t feel it. Flo’s eyes flickered just a little. Maybe she had taunted him enough, maybe this time he would finish her off with a big blow to her little head, or maybe he’d just throttle her. She imagined the pleasure in his face as he did it. But she glanced across to the kitchen door and behold, saw that God had arranged things on cue. Linda came in, calling out for the brat. And she was followed by Iris. The son of God had delivered his message in no uncertain terms. For it was through Iris that Jesus had risen.

*

“Come on, mate, it’s time to meet her majesty,” said the cop. He opened the cell door, it wasn’t really a cell, just a door, and a room with no bars, just a tiny window way up high looking out to Geringhap street, at least that’s the direction I thought. I had no way of knowing at the time. I got up off the bunk, ran my fingers through my hair then the cop took me tightly by the arm and led me out and up several flights of stairs, until we came to a big polished wooden door that he opened with a big key and pushed me through. The courtroom looked huge to me, but I think that was because there was hardly anyone there, just The Preacher on one side and Mr. Counter and my lawyer on the other side. I peered into the gloom of the ceiling and all round, the smell of polished wood hanging over everything, the dark colours adding to the gloom. Way up high I saw a very white face of an old lady, full of wrinkles and a huge head of white hair, wisps of it dyed the colour of tea. The cop gave me a nudge. “You better bow to her, if you don’t want to get on her wrong side.”

“Who the hell’s she?”

“Her honour, Justice of the Peace Grace McShearn.”

I don’t know if I bowed or not. I didn’t know what was going on. The cop put me in the dock and I just stood there, feeling like a dope. But at least I was up higher and could look out over the courtroom where I saw Kate and Grimesy sitting in the back row. I waved and smiled a big grin, it was so good to see them. But they just put on little smiles. Her honour stared down at me. I s’pose she didn’t like me smiling. She banged her gavel.

A bloke stood up and went on and on about what case I was and the charges laid against me and on and on. He sat down and then The Preacher stood up, stretching himself up and up to make himself look seven foot tall. And he held his head back, just like the white cockies do when they’re cracking a gum nut, his nose the biggest beak of all.

“Your honour,” he said, “I am Senior Constable Gregory Pope, prosecuting this case on behalf of her Majesty the Queen’s Royal Victorian Police Force, your honour, with the deepest respect and responsibility.”

Her honour sat motionless. Said nothing, peering out over her rimless spectacles. The Preacher coughed and continued.

“The crown charges that on Sunday, February 10, 1957, at approximately 1.00 a.m. one James Henderson, the accused, did unlawfully enter the residence of one Millicent Flattery of 25 North Shore Rd. and in a drunken fit of rage did batter said woman to death with a beer bottle and did defile her body in unspeakable ways. The charge is murder in the first degree. This despicable young hooligan went to this residence with the thorough and complete and only intent of defiling this woman and murdering her in revenge for the wrongs he claimed she had done to him.”

Her Honour looked down, the top of her head barely visible from the courtroom below, writing notes, and spoke without looking up.

“And what do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

Gees, I didn’t even realize she was talking to me. I just stood there looking dumb, waiting for the Preacher to keep on droning on, but he sat down.

“Young man?” The cop came up behind me and gave me a nudge. I was about to speak when the lawyer beside Mr. Counter stood up.

“He pleads, not guilty, your Honour,” at which The Preacher jumped up.

“Your Honour,” he complained, “on behalf of her Majesty the Queen, I object to this intervention. This hooligan has already confessed to the murder, I have it in writing here, in the notes I made.” He opened his bible and pulled out the notes where he always kept them.

I was about to answer “yes” but the lawyer jumped up and said, “If it please your Honour, the confession so-called was obtained under duress. Nor is it signed by the defendant, your honour.”

“I think I did it, your highness,” I blurted.

The Preacher jumped up and with a great flourish of his long arms he announced, “I rest my case.”

“This case is remanded for trial, the date to be set forthwith, in the superior court of Geelong. Next case,” announced the Justice of the Peace, still not looking up.

The cop led me out of the courtroom, but as we went down the stairs he said, “you want to go to the toilet? They’re moving you to the Geelong gaol to await trial, and I’ve heard that there’s no toilets in the cells, just buckets.”

*

Thank goodness, they took my clothes. I must have been wearing them for a week, without a bath or shower. I needed a shave and a haircut too, which they took care of as soon as they’d showered me with a hose and gave me a kind of jump-suit, I think they call them, like overalls. They were dark green. The guards were nice enough and this one guard who had a little Errol Flynn like moustache took me by the arm and led me out of the reception and into the prison. It was a shock, I tell you. The tiers of cells, all iron bars everywhere, steel steps and catwalks, enough to scare the shit out of anyone. Looked like they’d imported the whole thing from a James Cagney movie set. Of course, it was built a long time before that. The guard led me past a row of cells on the ground floor, a few blokes sitting or walking around their cells, muttering to themselves, some of them sticking their arms through the bars trying to touch me, but the guard gave them a little bang on the knuckles with his truncheon. We came to an empty cell, the door open. “Cell 45,” said the guard, “this will be your home for a year or two. Make sure you read the rules, especially the one about putting your bucket out. If you don’t, you’ll be the one that’s collecting the buckets.” He gave me a little push, slammed the door behind me and locked it with a couple of big keys.

The cot didn’t look too bad and the cell was kind of little, but then it was bigger than the doorway to the Victorian archives. At least it was a roof over my head. Prison cells are supposed to be horrible things because they take away your liberty, so they say. But it wasn’t how I felt that day. A prison in designed to lock you up and keep you in. But it’s also designed to keep people out and away from you. And right now, that’s what I wanted, to be alone. I lay on the cot, my head resting on my hands. My mind was blank, I wanted sleep and it came to me.

*

I know it seems a bit stupid, but when I awoke the next morning, must have been before they go around and get you all up, the first thing I had to do was sit on the bucket. Shit! Really! How could a bloke live like this, the fuckn stink and the bucket, you can’t sit on it anyway. When I finished my business, and put the bucket out where it was supposed to go, I lay back on my cot and decided that prison wasn’t a good place and that I’d rather kill myself than have to go through this every day. So, when the guard came to get me because I had a visitor, I was happy, and hoped it was the lawyer that Mr. Counter had got me.

But it wasn’t a lawyer that was waiting for me in the visiting room, it was half a lawyer, Grimesy! As soon as I saw him, I was so happy, I tried to run to him and give him a hug, but the guard grabbed me and said, “no touching! I’m the only bloke that’s allowed to touch!” So we sat down across from each other at a heavy old wooden table, made by one of the convicts, no doubt.

“Howyergoin’ mate?” asked Grimesy trying to hold back a grin.

“How’s it look?” I growled, holding back my own grin.

Grimesy didn’t beat about the bush. “Why the hell did you say you did it?” he asked, frowning at me.

“I was just telling the truth. I said I think I did it, but I didn’t say I did it.”

“You stupid bastard. You played into the Preacher’s hands.”

“Anyway, I’ve come to my senses this morning. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in here.”

“What are you saying? You want to hang?”

“Shit no! Of course I don’t”

“Well, that’s what everyone’s talking about. The Geelong Addy’s doing a big job on you. Front page, all about sex and violence. They’ve made you out like the green tent murderer.”

“Fuckn what?”

“The green tent murderer, a bloke called Owen McQueeney. He was in the cell you’re in, cell 45, right?”

“Yair, that’s what the gaoler said.”

“He was hanged just down the road from here on October 20, 1858.”

“Shit! But he must have done something really bad.”

“Yes, shot a pretty woman with two little kids and she was holding the baby in her arms when he shot her right through the eye.”

“And they’re saying I’m like that?”

“Yes, but with all the sex, Millie being a prostitute, and then our little seminar in your professor’s flat.” Grimesy grinned in spite of himself. “You should have seen the headlines in the Sun and the Addy. The Preacher was in his element.”

“That bible-bashing fuckn bastard.”

Grimesy suddenly changed the subject. “Kate couldn’t make it this morning.”

“Oh, shit. Gees, I miss her.”

“No doubt you do. She had tutes all day and demonstration cases to attend to with her students at Royal Melbourne.”

“So can you get me out?”

“Gees, James. I’m not exactly here as your lawyer. Still doing my articles. But that’s why I’m here.”

“What then?”

“The firm I’m doing my articles with. They’re interested in your case. It’s such high publicity, they think they can do pretty well out of it.”

“Yair? Nice of them to think of me.”

“I know. But they’ve got some really good contacts. They know what to do and who to talk to, if you see what I mean. Better than these Geelong solicitors whose only experience is collecting their fees when people buy and sell their houses.”

“So, I have to fire my lawyer, the one that Mr. Counter got?”

“No. I already did it for you.”

“Shit! Thanks a lot!”

“No, really. I talked with Mr. Counter and it’s all OK. His solicitor will tag along with my lot.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Everything I tell you, exactly. And the first thing is to renounce your supposed confession. I’ve already talked briefly with The Preacher. He wasn’t too pleased. I thought he was going to have Dopey sit on me, as a matter of fact.”

“Shit, what a couple of fuckn losers.”

“They’re winners right now, with all the publicity they’re getting.”

“So how do I take back my confession?”

“I want you first to sign this. It’s a statement retracting your confession. You can swear it in front of the gaoler here, hand on the bible.”

“Shouldn’t it be in front of a solicitor or something?”

“Yes. But it will do for now. Just something to scare the shit out of the Preacher.”

I did as I was told and the gaoler took me back to cell 45. I couldn’t understand why there were so few convicts and why it was so quiet. The gaoler said that it wasn’t a real prison any more. Something about a practice prison and it being kind of like a hospital.

“You mean I’m here because I’m sick in the head?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I’m only the gaoler. But I tell you, I’d be sick in the head too if I had a doctor like the one you’ve got.”

“What do you mean? I don’t have a psychiatrist.”

“That’s what you say. She’s gorgeous. I never saw such legs.”

“You saw her?”

“On the front page of The Sun! Yair. Doctor Kate they called her.”

*

That night I couldn’t sleep. After that shit in the bucket, everything had become crystal clear. I was having such a good time at the uni, I wasn’t going to let that Preacher take it away from me. And as well, it looked like Iris was alive! If only she’d come and visit me. We could make up. Oh my God! If only she were here right now!

I heard the clanking of keys and I peered through the bars to see who was coming down the catwalk. The lights were dim, there was the sound of a couple of blokes snoring in their cells. Soon out of the gloom there appeared, as if in a scary movie, two huge bodies. They were too big for the gaoler or the other guards. Then in horror, the light in my cell came on and I saw standing at the bars of my cell, The Preacher and Dopey. The Preacher stood taller than ever before, his bible held high above his head, almost hitting the pipes that ran across the ceiling. And Dopey, with a dopey grin, rattled the keys as loud as he could, then opened my cell door.

“So this is cell 45,” he said, as I cringed towards the back of the cell, “the correct number if I may say so, sir?”

“Indeed, it is God’s will,” replied the Preacher. “And now it will be his doing to make sure that justice is done in the name of her Majesty’s police force and the good people of Norlane.”

The Preacher had to duck his head to enter the cell. He held his bible out to me.

“Take this in your filthy hand, you villain, and say after me…”

I grabbed the bible and threw it hard against the wall. It fell to the floor, loose pages coming apart, fluttering slowly behind it. I crouched down in the corner of my cell, expecting a battering. But it didn’t come. Instead, the Preacher dropped to his knees, scrambling like an insect, trying to gather up the loose pages., muttering, his head and nose stretched out, “oh Lord, what violent creature is this, splattering your Word against the wall, defiling it on the filthy floor of his prison cell, upon which who knows what filth has been laid?” He stood up, clutching the loose pages, trying to insert them into their places in the bible which he clasped too tightly in his other hand.

“Constable,” said the Preacher, now sitting precariously on his haunches, “move yourself forward in such a way that you may, in consequence, retrieve this disgusting filth of a person so that he may receive the truth through the bible.”

Dopey waved his truncheon in the air and stepped forward. “Up we get, now, or I’ll have to help you up with this,” he said, pointing the truncheon at me.

“Leave me alone!” I whimpered, “I’m innocent! Fuckn innocent!”

“Take the bible, you nasty sinner, take it!” demanded The Preacher, “and in it you will find your confession, written down carefully according to her Majesty’s code of conduct for her Royal Constabulary! Read it and sign it and swear by Almighty God that it is the truth!”

I thought for a moment that I might retreat under the bed, but there was no room and the bed was firmly attached to the floor all the way around. There was nowhere to go but lie down flat, and that I did, calling out, “I am innocent of all charges! I never made a confession! It’s all lies!”

“Are you accusing me, the messenger of Jesus Christ himself, of untruthfulnesses?” The Preacher’s eyes narrowed, a snarl twisted his thin lips, and his beak nose twitched. “Constable!” he ordered, “it is time for the laying on of hands. Do so, in the name of the Queen!” He stood up and stepped back to the cell door, hands on his hips, bible carefully inserted into his inner pocket.

Dopey dropped his truncheon on to the cot then stooped down, his short beefy arms reaching around his rotund torso. “All right you evil bastard,” he said, his cheeks looking like they were full of a minimum of chips, “this is where you meet your maker, in the senior constable here.”

He grabbed me by the back of my collar and the seat of my pants and hurled me across the cell where I landed at the Preacher’s feet in a crumpled heap. I curled up expecting the bastard to put the boot into me, and he did, right into me guts. But it didn’t hurt as much as I expected, in fact I felt some of the old fire coming back into me. My cheeks and ears were pulsing with blood. I was on fire. I rolled with the kick, from a size 16 boot I’d say, then made a grab for the truncheon lying on the cot. Dopey was too slow to stop me, and before they knew it, I’d thrust the truncheon right into the Preacher’s balls. I heard a huge wheezing intake of air as he inhaled and held his breath in pain. But he didn’t yell. He bit his lip till it bled, and grabbed his bible in his both hands and pressed it into his groin. “May God in his mercy help me!” he cried.

Dopey wrenched the truncheon out of my hand, kneed me under the chin knocking me backwards, then lunged forward, all his weight on his knees pressing down on my chest. The air burst out of my lungs, I gasped for air. This time, it was the end, no hang man would be needed.

But the Preacher saved me. “Rise my good constable,” he cried, “rise and allow this evil man the opportunity to face the hang man as must all sinners who have done despicable acts as he.”

Dopey lifted his knees and stood unsteadily, using his truncheon as a support. I leaned back on the cot, huffing and coughing, my eyes closed.

“Look carefully, my son!” droned the Preacher in his familiar baritone voice, “thou shalt sign the retraction of the retraction of the confession.” He thrust the bible with the written retraction wedged inside it into my face. I took it and stared at it. Dopey handed me a pen. The Preacher continued, “sign it my boy, and thou shalt be forgiven your heinous crime once you are hanged.”

“Amen,” said Dopey.

“Perhaps he needs a little more help to put pen to paper,” said The Preacher to Dopey, nudging his elbow.

“Oh, yes, right sir!”

“Oh, and yes. incontrovertibly, unless you sign this, I will be charging you with assaulting an officer of the Royal Cons-tabulary,” said the Preacher, rubbing his balls.

I took the pen and wrote in my very worst scrawl:

“Futete”

*

I don’t know how many days went by, I never felt so helpless, except when I was sleeping in the doorways trying to find Iris. They wouldn’t let me phone anyone. All I could do was sit in cell 45. I asked for my kit bag of exercise books, but they said I couldn’t have them because they were evidence according to the Preacher. I was waiting for them to come back and beat me up again, but so far, nothing. The stupid bastards probably hadn’t even looked at it. I just asked for a pencil and paper, but they wouldn’t give that to me either.

I was so happy when at last I had a visitor, Mr. Counter, and when I got to the meeting room I saw that he had my stuck-up auntie with him as well. Mr. Counter strode up to give me a hug, but the gaoler stopped him. “No touching,” he proclaimed.

“We’re trying to get you out on bail,” said Mr. Counter. Your mates from Melbourne are pulling some strings, I think. But that’s not why we’re here.”

I sat down opposite them, auntie sitting apart, leaving an empty seat between her and Mr. Counter.

“Who’s the empty chair for?” I asked.

“Your mum was going to be here,” said Mr. Counter.

“Gees! Dad!” I blurted out, and I put my head between my hands. Mr. Counter was taken aback, as was auntie.

“Yair, too bad he wasn’t here,” said Mr. Counter.

“No, I meant…”

“I know what you meant, Jimmy.”

“Hello Jimmy,” said auntie.

“G’day,” I said, still with my head in my hands, ruffling through my hair.

“Your mum couldn’t come,” said auntie.

“Why not?” I asked, lifting my head, looking at auntie and then Mr. Counter.

Mr. Counter opened his mouth to answer, but auntie kept at it. “She’s had a stroke and she’s in hospital,” she said.

“A stroke? What’s that?” I asked, feeling foolish because I didn’t have a clue.

“It was a big one, and she can’t talk, probably will not make it more than a few days,” said Mr. Counter.

“A blood vessel has burst in her brain,” added auntie.

Well, who was I going to talk to? I started muttering to my Dad, but stopped because it wasn’t my dad and I know it doesn’t matter because he’s dead and so if he is or wasn’t my Dad, I can still talk to him, can’t I?

“We’re going to see her after we leave here. The hospital’s just down the road from here.”

“Yair, I know all about that hospital. I was there when Iris…”

“I know. Speaking of which, you wouldn’t happen to have the clothes you wore that night?”

“What night?”

“The night you’re supposed to have killed Millie.”

“Maybe. I s’pose Abbie washed them.”

“They had blood all down the front, Spuds said, right?”

“Yair. That’s what I remember he said and what he told the Preacher too. Why?”

“Because your mate Grimes says that maybe the blood was from when you were cradling Iris in your arms that night.”

“Gees, Mr. Counter, I mean Dad, I mean…”

“It’s all right. Why don’t you just call me Eddie?” my new Dad said with a smile.

“Gees, Mr. Counter, Dad, I dunno. I’m all mixed up, you know? I’m buggered if I know what’s what.”

Auntie shifted in her seat. She wanted to go, I could see it. She never had much patience. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t ever want to go live with her. Fancy living with an old spinster, for Christ sake. A cranky old bitch, that’s what she’d be.

“I’ll ask Abbie to look for the clothes. They were your good Fletchers and shirt that my wife bought you, weren’t they?”

Auntie shifted in her seat again.

“But Abbie always washed my clothes and put them away all nice and pressed. She really liked doing that,” I said.

“Anyway, it won’t hurt to ask.”

“Can you ask Grimesy to do something else for me?”

“Of course.”

“Could he bring me my Latin books and other uni stuff so I can keep up with my uni work? And get the solicitor or whatever he’s called to make the bastards here let me read and write in my cell? They won’t even let me have a pencil or paper, except to wipe my ass. Sorry, excuse me auntie.”

“I’ll do what I can. I have to wait until he shows up at the pub, because I don’t have a phone number for him. But I do for your Melbourne solicitor, so I will phone him too.”

“We should be going,” said auntie, “I’m very worried about…”

I just sat there and said nothing. I couldn’t think what to say. I mean, was I supposed to be all broken up about a mother who walked out on me and me Dad, except he wasn’t me dad. Shit, it’s all fucked up. Iris? Are you there somewhere? Iris? I really need to talk to you, and I need one of them big wet kisses, you know?

*

I spent that night thinking about Iris, imagining she showed up in my cell and we went at it just like we used to. It seems like years ago since my Latin exam. Trouble was, though, it always ended up a nightmare as I lived that horrible night over again when her life bled away all over the bed.

The next morning, right on cue, good old Grimesy and the solicitor showed up with not only my uni books but my kit bag of exercise books as well. So now, I could be quite happy in my cell. Except, of course, for the bucket business. So the first thing I did was write a letter to the Addy complaining about the bucket and pointing out that this was 1957 and there was such a thing as a sewer in Geelong, wasn’t there?

And now that I had time to think a bit, I realized that I hadn’t met any other prisoners. That I was in solitary confinement which was supposed to be a horrible part of being locked up in gaol. But I liked being on my own, didn’t I Dad?—whichever of you wants to listen—I liked it. I was used to it. That was my problem, ac¬cording to Iris. It’s what made her get mad at me, my always wanting to be left alone, even by her when I’d had my fill. “You’re just using me up,” she’d say, “like all men, like me mum says. Once you’ve fucked me, ya leave me.” And I’d say, “who’s your mum?” And she’d get up and slap me and say, “fuck you, it’s none of your business.” Course, I thought I knew who my Dad was. How wrong could you be? Shit, Iris will laugh when she finds out that my dad was not my Dad.

And then I had another visitor. As the gaoler led me out of my cell, I was sure that this time it had to be Iris. It just had to be. But when I got near to the meeting room, I could hear screeching and yelling and I knew that it was not Iris. Unless, of course she’d come with Linda, because there was no mistaking that ear-splitting scream of her brat. On cue, the little vixen zoomed out the door of the meeting room and ran down the passageway, a gaoler chasing after her yelling, “you’re not allowed down there, come back here!” and the brat bangs into my gaoler and kicks him in the shins and he yelps and swears and joins the chase.

And there she was, Little Linda sitting there over in the corner of the waiting room. She was all dressed up, though, and looked even pretty, I’d say, not so worn out, and dressed in clothes that even I could see were nice and new and must have cost her a penny.

“Gees, Linda, what happened to you? You look great!”

“Fuckn thanks for the compliment, you shit!” she laughed.

“No worries!” I say as I plonk myself down in front of her. “Thanks for coming to see me.”

“Yair, well I wouldn’t have, but Iris made me.”

“Iris?” I said, my ears going red. “Iris? She’s not dead, then? It’s not just a rumour?”

“Nah. She’s alive and kicking, that’s for sure. In fact, she’s living with me.”

“What’s new about that? Didn’t you all live with your mum and dad and Iris when she felt like it?”

“Yair, sort of, though Iris always said she didn’t live there.”

“Yair?”

“And by the way. Flo is not me mother.”

“Who is, then?” I asked, don’t know why, because I didn’t really care, did I?

“Millie.”

“No kidding? That fuckn…”

“You better not say it.”

“So you’ve come to see me, even though I murdered your mum?”

“Yair, because that’s what the stupid brat said you did.”

“She saw me murder Millie?”

“Nah. She told The Preacher that she saw you coming out of her house that night, blood all down you.”

“Shit. Linda. I can’t remember anything about that night, and I don’t remember being in that house.”

“It’s my house now,” she said with a cocky smile.

“Yair? How come?”

“Because I was Millie’s daughter and we worked together, and she left it to me in her will along with everything else.”

“She had money enough to leave stuff to you? She owned the house fair and square?”

“Yair.”

“Fucking hell!”

I sat and thought a while. I could hear the running and yelling going on outside the meeting room, the gaolers still trying to catch the brat. Linda was obviously having fun. I sat quiet because I couldn’t think of exactly what to say next. Tank, her dad, was Millie’s best customer! So, would Linda step into the breach? Shit, it was too much. And then with Tank and Flo being brother and sister. Linda puts her hand out and squeezes mine. Her fingers are decked out with rings and her wrists with bangles. She smiles sweetly, something I’d never seen her do before. In fact, I think she was sober. “I know all about Iris and I suppose you do too,” she said.

“Only what Flo told me that night at the hospital when Iris was dying.

“That Tank and Flo are brother and sister and that Iris is their daughter?”

“Yair. That’s it.”

“That’s only the half of it.”

“What else could there be?”

“Well, you know how she won’t sleep in one place for very long? She goes off, escapes through windows, you must know that.”

“Yair, but I thought she did that at the pub because she didn’t want anyone to catch us at it.”

“Maybe a bit of that. But she does that at Tank and Flo’s too. They most of the time have never known where she was right from when she was little, like my brat out there.”

“You mean she kept running away?”

“Yair, especially at night. She’d sleep who knows where.”

“But what about school?”

“She never went to school. Tank and Flo were so fucked up about it, they didn’t want anyone to find out that she was their daughter. She was born at home, and they kept her locked in her bedroom till I dunno when. After she got old enough, she started slipping out her bedroom window and sneaking into other peoples’ houses, wandering around the neighbourhood. They never registered her birth so they couldn’t send her to school, could they?”

“Fuckn shit!”

“I don’t think she can read or write, But I’m not sure about that. I never saw Tank or Flo teaching her. I s’pose she might have taught herself. The only thing Iris can do, I’d guess, is recite Flo’s fuckn bible off by heart.”

I looked at Linda in astonishment. I was so thankful for her telling me all this. I squeezed her hands back and drew her to¬wards me.

“I can’t tell you how much all this means to me, Linda. I nearly went crazy trying to find her and was convinced that she was dead, because I couldn’t find any trace of her anywhere and I went to the Victorian archives and never found anything and then came to the conclusion one night when I was full of booze and out of my mind that she never existed at all and that I’d imagined the whole thing.”

“Yair, well. She’ll be fuckn cross with me for telling you all this.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Go on then.”

“Does Iris help you out in the business? Did she work for Millie?”

Linda grinned. The noise of the brat suddenly came louder. “Not as far as I know. Course, now you know what she was like, there’s every chance she slept at Millie’s on and off, but she slept in lots of people’s places and most of them never knew it.”

“Yair, it’s not the sleeping I’m worried about, bugger you.”

“You fuckn men. You want each woman all to yourselves, but then you go off and fuck everyone you can. What do they call youse? You know the word, don’t you, now that you’re a uni student?”

“Hypocrites?”

“Yair. Fuckn hypocrites, that’s what you are. Fuckn hypocrites.”

At that moment, the brat screeched to a halt at our table and punched me in the stomach. It was her way of saying hello be¬cause she liked me.

“G’day brat,” I say.

Linda grabs her hand and holds on tight. “Ya didn’t see Chooka there at Millie’s did ya?”

“Fuck no!” she yelled and ran off, running around the meeting room, tipping over as many chairs as she could. Then she comes back. She’s got a crumpled up piece of paper in her hand.

“Who did you see, then?”

“Tank of course. I told the fuckn Preacher that lots of times.”

“You did?” I asked.

The brat punched me again and threw the piece of crumpled paper at me. “Yair,” she said, “and I gave him a good kick too.” Off she went again, tripping up the chairs, then returned. It was like a game.

“Who else did you see?” I asked.

“Only Tank. But he’s always there.” She had yet another piece of paper, squeezed into a ball and threw it in my face.

“Fuckn little brat!” I complained, grabbing the paper and putting it in my pocket. The gaoler would use it as an excuse to give me bucket duty if I left any mess behind.

Linda grabbed the brat. “Gotta go. Got a very important app¬ointment at the pub with a couple of beers.”

“Yair,” I said, “sorry I won’t be there to serve you. Can you get Iris to come?”

“You know what she’s like. Nobody, except maybe you, can get her to do anything.”

I handed her a note. “Would you please give her this?”

“But what if she can’t read it?”

Then you’ll have to read it to her.”

The note read:

Ovid loves you.

“What the fuckn hell’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, staring at the note.

“Don’t tell me you can’t read either.”

“Fuck you!” she cried as she crumpled it up and threw it back at me.

The brat grabbed it off the floor and stuck it in her mouth.

“You fuckn little shit!” I yelled and grabbed her arm.

“Hey asshole!” yelled Linda, “leave me little brat alone! Gaoler! Gaoler!”

The gaoler rushed over and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pushed me away and I fell over a chair and slid to the floor. “Get up you fuckn murderer!” he ordered with great satisfaction, “you’re going to solitary for this!”

Since I was already in solitary I didn’t think that would matter. I sullenly gave myself up to him and Linda laughed as I was led away.

I wasn’t taken back to my cell. Instead the gaoler led me down a long catwalk, past many cells, a few of which had inmates, and they all stuck their arms through the bars and whistled at me like I was a sheila. We reached the end of the passageway and entered a small windowless room. “On your knees,” ordered the gaoler. I saw that look on his face. It was the same as Dr. Pulcher’s.

And when he was done, he said, “Now masturbate into this cup.”

“What? You fuckn pervert!”

The gaoler brandished his truncheon. Ya want a dose of this?” he threatened.

I did what I was told. Kate was wrong. There is such a thing as a bad orgasm.

*

The bastards wouldn’t let me out to go to my mother’s funeral. Poor mum. What a life she had first with my Dad or whatever he was, and then living with that bitter body auntie Connie. I know I should have gone with her that day she walked out on us. I know I should have. My Dad, I mean Mr. Counter, he should have made me. But he didn’t. I suppose it would have been awful for him too, seeing me go away and live with my mum, and knowing it was probably the last he’d see of me. But there you go, who knows what might have happened? And I never would have met up with Iris, and shit, I wouldn’t want to be without that to think of, and I do go over those amazing few hours we had after my Latin exam, every night I relive them, every night.

So now I’m sitting in my cell 45, waiting for something to happen, sitting on that fucking stinking bucket, and the days go by. I no longer have so many visitors coming to see me. My gaoler taunts me, tells me that none of them care about me, and why would they, because they’ve got their own lives to worry about, don’t they? I’ve changed my tactics with him. I don’t swear at him anymore, because that’s what he wants. He likes to see my ears and cheeks go red. So I just sit on my cot, reading through my old notebooks. Thank goodness Grimesy managed to get them back from the Preacher. And I’ve been expecting the Preacher to come and try to break me open. Ever since I talked to the brat, I was sure that he’d come because it was obvious to me that he didn’t have a case. Who the hell would believe anything that the brat said in court? They’d never be able to get her to stay still for long enough to answer a question. Besides, Mr. Counter had dug out my old clothes that I had on that horrible night that Iris died (that’s still how I think of it), and got a mate of his in the police forensics lab in Melbourne to look for any remnants of blood and he found some. It wasn’t Millie’s according to Dad. Apparently, Linda had produced a piece of the blood-stained sheet from Millie’s bed.

The only one who came regularly was Mr. Counter, I mean, my Dad. It got that way, though that I wished he wouldn’t come because we ran out of things to say, once he’d given me a run-down of the usual goings-on at the pub, told what little news there was on my case and that the Preacher and Dopey showed up at the pub at six o’clock every night just like they always did. And the Preacher never said anything about me and even when Dad asked him why wasn’t he dropping the case, the Preacher kept saying that it was out of his hands now and nobody could figure out what that meant.

And still no Iris. I pleaded with Mr. Counter to find her and bring her to me but he said he couldn’t force her to come, could he? And besides, he only got fleeting glimpses of her, she was still occasionally sleeping in my room, and Little Linda said she was sometimes at home and sometimes at Millie’s, now Linda’s, and who knows where else she slept.

The trouble with gaolers is that they don’t know when to stop. Once they get you doing what they want, they get off on the bullying and they can’t resist beating the shit out of you. So at night when there was nothing to do or think about except bodily functions, I began to plan my revenge, or properly, an action that would put my gaoler out of action. He had changed himself on to a deep night shift, no doubt so he could get access to me without anyone knowing. He’d come into my cell and I’d have to perform or get beaten, and more and more it was both. Now, what I’m about to tell you is absolutely disgusting, but you have to under¬stand the situation I was in. It was unbearable, having to do what he made me do. It was my only course of action. Any inmate worth his salt can acquire a knife and that applies to yours truly. I had originally considered biting off his you-know-what, but even I thought that way too disgusting. The thought of it. No, I couldn’t do it.

The faint sound of Johnny Ray singing “Walkin’ in the Rain” wafted in from some bloke’s radio. Funny, I never much listened to the radio and couldn’t give a shit about the top songs. But there was something about that song and Johnny Ray’s kind of lost voice. It took me back to when I was looking for Iris that cold night in Melbourne, going from doorway to doorway, shivering from the drizzle that wouldn’t let up. I started to hum along with it as I sharpened my knife on the bluestone wall of my cell.

*

The next morning, I was taken from my cell and led to the inter¬rogation room where awaited none other than the Preacher and standing by the door was Dopey. My right hand was bandaged from a cut I had received last night, but the Preacher paid no heed to that. Instead as soon as I entered, he stood up as tall as he could in his usual way and pronounced, “I have a few more questions for you, young man, in my capacity of Queen’s Counsel, which may be of individual consequence to you.”

“Where’s my fuckn lawyer, your majesty?”

“There is no need of that at this stage.”

“What fuckn stage is that, your majesty?”

“We have new evidence,” he said, his beak stuck up in the air, “evidence that is absolutely substantial and incontrovertible in consequence.”

“Yes, what’s that?” I asked, feeling all cheeky because it looked like I had got away with my gaoler’s foreskin.

“We found a match between your semen and semen found in Millicent Flattery’s vaginal orifice.”

“It’s a fuckn lie! You put it there, you fuckn bunch of shit-heads!”

“I am her Majesty’s representative. I do not lie.”

“Yair? Well you better get specimens from half of Norlane because that’s whose left their marks in Millie’s post box!”

Dopey grunted and shifted from one foot to the other. “He’s got a point there,” he mumbled.

The Preacher took off his hat and banged it on the table. “I’ll have none of that!” he barked, spittle spraying out of his parrot-like mouth, set between rapidly reddening cheeks. And the spittle was directed at Dopey, chagrined and frightened. For a moment, I thought the Preacher was going to hit him with his bible, which was raised well above his head poised to strike.

“Yair, well this has got nothing to do with me,” and I got up to leave.

At that moment, though, the door flew open and in ran the brat, chased by Linda, Grimesy running behind, and further behind, I am sure to this day, as I tried to look past Dopey who was trying to block the door, I caught a glimpse of Iris peaking around Grimesy from afar, her slender little body looking all of 14 years old and no more. But Dopey managed to slam the door shut behind Grimesy so we were all enclosed in the tiny interrogation room with the brat running the show. She did her usual stunt of throwing over the chairs and this was enough to cause The Preacher to almost burst in frustration. He reared up, holding his bible aloft, looking at it, I suppose hoping it would tell him what to do. I know what he wanted to do, he wanted to swat the brat with his bible like he was swatting a fly. She then jumped up on the table, Linda standing there, smiling proudly, and jumped up and down making a terrible din and pointing at The Preacher. “He’s the one! He’s the one!” she chanted in time with her jumps, “he’s the one! He’s the one! And so is he!” And she pointed to Dopey.

“The one what?” asked Grimesy, almost speechless.

“At Mil-l-lie’s, at Mill-l-lie’s!” she chanted.

“And that’s all?” persisted Grimesy. I was wishing he’d let up.

“And Tank, Tank!!”

“And anyone else?”

“And Chook-a! And Chook-a!” she said pointing to me.

“And anyone else?”

“Mum-m-y! Mum-m-y!” she said pointing at Linda.

The brat suddenly tired of jumping, climbed off the table and went running out the door and down the passage with Dopey chasing her.

“So, either it was a gang bang, or she’s lying. The only way to determine this would be to get a sample of semen from all persons named, except of course Linda,” said Grimesy, clearly enjoying himself.

The Preacher gathered up his papers, plonked his hat on his head and departed, his tail between his legs, if you could imagine a giraffe doing that. We all followed and I could almost have walked out of the gaol with them, except that the gaoler on duty at the front just caught sight of me in time. I wasn’t trying to escape, though. I was looking for Iris.

*

A couple of days went by, I’m not sure how many. I was in a kind of frenzy, a “manic state” as Kate would say. I sat in the corner of my cell and did all my uni work that I could, kept up with the Caesar translations and all the rest. I couldn’t hardly sleep, in fact it got like I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or asleep. I started walking up and down the cell. I walked round and round my cot, reciting Tacitus and even bits of Ovid. Sweat poured down my sides, my shirt stuck to my back. I began to peel off my clothes, trying to cool down. I would close my eyes, but it seemed like I was still seeing the cell and I walked round and round my cot without bumping into anything. I was convinced I had a kind of x-ray vision. I ran my fingers through my hair, my beautiful brown wavy air that was now dank with sweat. I rubbed my eyes and opened them, and then I gasped at what I saw. Iris stood before me, her slender little body swaying as though in a forest of trees bending in a cool breeze. Her sweet thin lips sparkled with the wetness I cherished. “Iris! My Love! You’re alive!”

“Of course, I am, stupid,” she said, standing across the other side of my cot.

“Oh Iris! I’ve waited for you for so long!”

I extended my arms and she jumped lightly onto the cot and let me take her into my arms. Oh God, Dads, Ovid and whoever else is listening! Words fail me! What can I say other than I must let myself be taken away, pulled down into an abyss of love, lust, her wet lips I feel cooling, sliding all over. My body melts at her touch. I see the mist in her adorable sheep’s eyes that envelope and reduce me to little more than an insect scurrying here and there, hoping, searching for love.

*

It takes a long time to wake up from love. And when I did, Iris was gone, the cell door locked. I called for the gaoler, but no one came. I called again threatening to empty my bucket through the bars of my cell. A new gaoler marched up. He opened the cell door. “You have a visitor,” he said.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Eight a.m., Monday”

“Monday?”

“Yair. You’ve been out to it for a day or two. We were starting to get a bit worried. Pack up your things. You’re leaving us.”

I felt like I’d just come off a real bender. The saliva was caked solid in my mouth, my hair stuck to my fingers when I ran them through it. I hadn’t shaved for I don’t know how long and my beard itched like hell and I couldn’t stop myself from rubbing it between my fingers.

“Can’t I get cleaned up?”

“Where you going to do that? The bathrooms are reserved for the staff, you know that. Come on. Get going.”

I stuffed everything I could into my kit bag and trudged on behind him. He never looked behind. I could have stayed there and he wouldn’t have known. We came through the turnstile and entered the passageway to the reception. The gaoler pulled me into a room where I had to sign for my belongings, all of which I forgot I had. But the first thing I noticed was the red packet of my Craven A’s. And my lighter that someone had given me, or maybe I never had one. Who knows?

“Sign here,” he says.

And I was out in the street before I knew it, the sun tearing at my eyes. Without thinking I dropped to my knees, head in my hands, eyes covered.

“What are ya fuckn-a doing down-a there?” comes a voice. The voice I knew right away. It was my old mate Spuds. I looked up, barely making him out against the glaring blue sky of Geelong. I felt his beefy hand under my arm as he pulled me up, then he gave me a bit of a shake. “Ya all right-o mate? Ya look like shit.”

“Shit and fuckn hell, Spuds! What the buggery are you doing here?”

“Had to drop-a by and visit an old mate in the clink for beating up his missus. Too much-a grappa, I think. Heard they was-a dropping all the charges against ya, so I told Eddie I’d pick you up. Here, this’ll bring ya back-a to life.”

He hands me his bottle of grappa.

“Shit and fuckn hell, Spuds! I can’t drink that. I’d have to go into training for a week. Let’s go and have a beer instead. There’s a pub just across the road, isn’t there?”

“Yair. I think ya mean-a the Vic-a, Victoria hotel. We can go there if ya like. They’re a bit stuck-uppa for me, though.”

I look across the road and I see Swampy’s truck. “You still working for Swampy?” I ask.

“Off and on. Not-a much time to work after we have a few beers.”

“Is Swampy at the pub now?”

“Where else?”

“Then let’s go. It’ll be like old times.”

*

We never made it to the pub, at least not right away. I looked across Gheringhap street and thought I saw someone in Swampy’s truck.

“I thought you said Swampy was at the pub?”

“He is.”

“Then who’s that in the truck?”

“Fuck! Someone’s-a stealing the fuckn wreck. Who’d want-a do that? Fuckn bastardi!”

We ran across the road, me struggling to carry my kitbag full of my notebooks. Spuds threw open the door and then stepped back, his jaw dropped half a foot. “Shit and bloody hell!” he cries. I looked past him and there, sitting in the middle of the front seat, was Iris.

“G’day,” she grinned.

“Well, bugger me!” was all I could say, and followed it up with, “oh! Shit in Heaven!”

“Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?” she says, still with a big grin.

“Where do ya want it?” jokes Spuds.

“Get the fuck out of the way,” I splutter, dropping my kitbag and pushing into the cabin. Those wet kisses, they’re what I’ve dreamed of so many lonely nights in gaol.

“Oh, Iris, I thought you were dead!”

“Too bad, huh?”

“Fuck, Iris! You haven’t changed one little bit!”

“Yair, and you have, so I’ve heard.”

“What do you mean?” By now I was kissing her all over and she’s pulling away.

“You stink!” she says.

“Yair, that’s right, he smells like a shit-house,” says Spuds.

“Fuck off!” I snarl.

“He’s right. No more kisses till ya clean yourself up. Didn’t the gaol have any water?”

“Just a bucket.”

*

I never thought of myself as a hero, just the opposite. I’d had time to mull over my life when I was in gaol and it wasn’t too good. I started to feel sorry for myself and came to the conclusion that I’d had a hard life and was dealt a rotten hand. The trouble with sitting alone for too long in a little cell is that you can’t stop yourself from going over and over the things that you did and didn’t do. Thinking up ways not to blame yourself for your current circumstances requires a lot of talking to yourself, and then having to answer your own talk. If you don’t blame yourself then you blame others, isn’t that right? Someone has to have the blame heaped on them. I started to wonder how old people manage this, because they have a lot more memories than I have, so how would they get through it all? They’ve had a lot more time to do things they were sorry for, haven’t they? And this got me to thinking about my Dads, yes, my drunken dad and my real dad (so he says). My drunken Dad must have suffered something terrible because of all the things he did to my mother and to me, not that he beat us much, but more that he started out with such great promise with a great job down at the Phosphate company, but pissed it all away with the booze. And I could see now that the booze does one wonderful thing for a bloke, it gets rid of all those relentless self-blaming thoughts and without guilt or any other complication, lays the blame on everyone else, or doesn’t even let you think in terms of blame at all. You just live your life in a comfortable fog, only now and again reminded of the impossible situation one is in, which is that the booze demands that you spend all your time and money on it, and eventually you run out of both so if you have a good friend or family, they’ll take care of you while you drink yourself into an unconscious state, never to wake up, and an alcoholic stupor, no matter what it looks like from the outside, as far as the drunk is concerned—and believe me I know even though I’m so young—wraps up your mind in a blanket and won’t let it think beyond the craving, there’s no room for guilt or blame. So I came to the conclusion in gaol that I did the right thing by my alcoholic Dad sitting with him, holding his hand, helping him move on. And I saw clearly that he didn’t care one hoot for me and I had no right to expect it.

As for my other Dad, my real Dad, so called, things seemed to me to be a lot more complicated. Mr. Counter, I mean Dad, came and saw me in gaol almost every day. Always, I felt guilty after he left and always I blamed myself for all the awful, ungrateful things I had done to him, even without meaning it. We would sit there, staring around the meeting room, looking for things to say. He’d ask me about the gaol, if they were treating me all right, and of course I’d say everything was fine, which it was, well except for that small incident with my gaoler and of course the bucket business. I liked being on my own, but I didn’t tell him that. And I’d ask how things were at the pub and he’d tell me this or that about the characters who’d come in, and whether this or that barman was pilfering cigarettes. He told me of Sugar now promoted to being the manager of the pub so that took a lot of work off Dad’s hands, and I said that was good, and Sugar deserved it and I was sure he would do a good job. One thing I know he really wanted to ask me but didn’t. He wanted to ask me if I really did kill Millie, just between the two of us. He wanted me to tell him man to man that I didn’t do it. But he did not ask and I did not offer.

I did once try to talk about Mum to him, but he got so emotional about it, I stopped. He almost cried, actually, he pretty much did cry, and I said how really sorry I was how it had all turned out, and that I deeply regretted not getting the chance to see her again and start a new life as her son. But to be honest, I didn’t really believe what I was saying, and I think that Dad felt it. So that made things worse. Seeing Mr. Counter cry over her, my mother, the wife he could not have, and look at me with so much love in his heart, I just couldn’t bear the responsibility of taking it on. And afterwards in my solitary gaol cell, I cried quietly too, I cried for the Mum who I had rejected and for the Dad whose love I could not absorb.

I carried all of this with me and my kitbag as Spuds ushered us into the old bar, the greasy canvas still hanging in the doorway. And when we entered, a roar spontaneously rose from the crowd, blokes calling out, “Good-on-yer mate” and lots of joking abuse. I immediately grabbed Iris and held her to me, because I knew that she should not be there. And she clung to me too, completely overcome. Because I tell you, all those blokes screaming and yelling, and a woman, well a girl, in the bar, that was enough to start a riot!

I could see behind the crowd, Sugar peeking out from the bar. He was pouring a couple of pots and beckoned to me. Then Mr. Counter appeared behind him and Sugar moved away. We made our way through the crowd until everyone suddenly went quiet. Mr. Counter poured a lemon squash for Iris, thinking that she was not old enough to drink and he was probably right, but I grinned to myself, there’s no way anyone could prove it!

A loud, deep raucous gravelly voice snapped through the silence. It was Swampy. He raised his pot high above the crowd and announced:

“Haw! Haw! To the best mate we have who beat the fuckn coppers and now he’s got the best sheila in Norlane!”

“Here! Here!” chanted the crowd. And we all downed our drinks, even Mr. Counter from behind the bar, breaking his number one rule.

It was a bit hard getting out of the bar. Swampy and Spuds especially wanted to kick on, as usual. But Mr. Counter, Dad, shouted the bar and everyone was happy while me and Iris sneaked out the back and met him in the kitchen. Abbie was there, all smiles.

“Here’s your bacon and eggs,” she smiled, “and your room is all just like it used to be.” She glanced a little warily at Iris. “And this must be Iris?” Her big teeth sparkled with her great smile.

“Yair, this is Iris,” and I turned to her, grinning, “Iris meet Abbie my best friend.”

“Servant, more like,” Abbie joked.

Iris put out a limp hand and they shook. I looked around for Mrs. Counter but she wasn’t there.

“Where’s Nipper?” I asked.

“Ah well, it was very sad. He broke off his chain and scaled the fence, we reckon, and ran straight across the Melbourne road and a car ran him over. It was the busy footy traffic coming back from Melbourne.”

“Too bad. But I always knew he’d have a violent death.”

Iris squeezed my hand. She remembered that time with Nipper. But I was remembering something else. We sat down to eat our bacon and eggs, gulp down some tea.

Mr. Counter came in with my kitbag. “You left this in the bar,” he said.

“Gees, thanks, I don’t what I’d do if I lost it.”

“Yes, I know.”

Then Abbie chimed in. “Your clothes and everything are all in your room. And there’s a towel there for you and I’ll put another one there for Iris.” She looked coyly at Iris, then to me. “You could do with a wash,” she said.

“There she goes,” I said to Iris, “she’s like the mother I never had.” And immediately I said that I knew I shouldn’t have.

“Get settled in, son, and later today we’ll talk about what you want to do.”

“O.K. Dad,” I said.

We got back to my old room and slammed the door shut.

“He’s your dad?” she asked, “I thought your dad drank himself to death?”

“Yair, he did. It’s a long story. But I got to hit the shower, don’t I?”

“You do,” she said, planting wet kisses on my forehead, the only place where there was no hair.

*

I’m sitting in the vestibule of auntie Connie’s house, my books on the lace covered table. The light is dim and I peer through the lace draped window at the squalls whirling around outside, blowing old scotch thistles down the road. The first winter chill is here and light rain gently taps against the window and iron roof above. My uni books are strewn on the floor beside me. I can hear auntie Connie fiddling around in the kitchen.

The day I got sprung from gaol and returned to the pub, I’m trying hard to forget. I can’t bear thinking about it but my mind keeps swirling around like the wind outside, sweeping up my thoughts, going around and around, obsessive thoughts, as Kate would call them. I’m at a loss to understand why things turned out the way they did, especially when I spent many hours, day and night, dreaming about Iris and me getting back together, repeat¬ing those magic moments after my Latin exam. And when I rushed out of the shower, a towel loosely draped around my body and barged into my room, and readied myself to pounce on her, lying there, on my bed, flat on her back, her hands behind her head, her hair, I now noticed, cropped short like it was the first day we met. I had planned to leap on the bed and get to work on her. But I don’t know why, I thought she’d be there, lying there, naked waiting for me. But she was completely clothed and she looked at me, sort of past me with those grey disconnected eyes. For one horrible moment, I imagined her at Millie’s, running from room to room, satisfying her customers. I dropped my towel and stood before her. Maybe that would be enough to bring her back. And there was plenty to look at, I can tell you. And she did glance at me, and she did hold out her arms, inviting me in. And I did approach slowly, and lay down beside her. I gently unbuttoned her little floral dress to expose her neat, still small and round tits, and tried to gently pull it off. I wanted her naked. She didn’t help me in this task. Instead, I had to push her over to get at the buttons at back, had to put my hands up under her dress to pull off her panties. But at last, I had her naked, lying flat on her back. I cocked my leg over her and sat back, looking down, pleased with what I saw. She smiled and put her hands up to ruffle my wavy brown hair that needed trimming. I ran my hands through her firmly cropped hair and that was enough to send me off. I started at it, but I could see that her heart was not in it. She was going through the motions. Me, I was of course, going for it. But it was all pure sensation, my mind running in another direction. I rose up on my knees. She grabbed me and pulled me forward, guided me into her tits and it was there that I let it all out.

I sat back on my haunches, stunned, I don’t know what kind of expression I must have had on my face. And then she laughed, looking down at my deposit, of which there was a lot. Maybe because of what happened she doesn’t let anyone inside her any more. She’s just too scared. Yet she didn’t look scared. She looked amused, or something like that.

“What’s going on?” I said, talking as much to myself as to her.

“Gees, I don’t know,” she said.

“Are you scared to do it now?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, are you?”

“I don’t think so. But you were just the same, weren’t you?”

“Well, it’s sex, isn’t it? Like a friend of mine said, there’s no bad orgasms.”

“Except I didn’t have one, did I?”

“Nah, so what’s going on?”

“And who’s your friend, by the way?”

“Just someone I met at uni.”

Iris scowled like I’d seen her when she talked to Tank, “You asshole, you’ve been fucking uni girls while I was dying.”

“It’s not like that,” I complained.

She put her fingers between her tits, scraped up some of my deposit and then stuck her fingers into my mouth.

“Oh shit and fuckn hell, Iris, what the fuck are you doing?” I screamed trying to spit it all out.

“So you’re still the asshole you always were,” she said, this time with a smirk.

“I spent months looking for you, Iris. I couldn’t find you. It drove me crazy. I thought you were dead..”

“Yair, not crazy enough,” she grinned, just as I was about to climb off her.

“You can ask my uni friends,” I said.

“So, are ya going to give me an orgasm or not?” she asked with a big smile, the one that I liked.

*

I couldn’t concentrate, so I put on my old school jacket and stepped outside into the cold wind and the rain that had died down to a drizzle. I walked into the open paddock beside auntie Connie’s, picking my way through the big scotch thistles, some of them as high as my waist. They said there were lots of tiger snakes in among the old grey rocks, but they wouldn’t be out in this weather anyway. I found a large rock covered in hard greeny-grey lichen and sat down, feeling the wet seep through my pants. The wind blew red dust from the roadside into my face and I covered it with my hands. They were building commission houses on this land too. I could see in the distance the half-built houses and hear the hammering of nails.

That first month at uni was gone, well gone. I had nowhere else to stay except here, and life was glum, as glum as it could be, because auntie Connie was a bitter old lady who never had a fuck in her whole life and she lived in a little house in this desert of a place that soon would be surrounded by a desert of commission houses. I knew as soon as Iris left, which she always did, a fact that I had conveniently forgotten—I knew that my life in Norlane was untenable. I woke up that morning and the window was open and Iris was gone, just like always. Where she had gone, nobody knew. She lived a life of fleeting moments. Like a ghost, she appeared here and there, disappearing for days in a row, reappearing somewhere else. For heaven’s sake, she could just as easily emerge from one of these rabbit burrows in amongst the old rocks. I knew that I had no future with her, nor she with me. And now I couldn’t understand why I had been so obsessed with finding her. I should have gone on with my new life, an exciting and amazing uni life, and forgot about her. I nearly did, mind you. But I didn’t, did I?

So here I am, stuck with old auntie Connie, poor thing. She’s nice enough to me, but we just don’t have anything to say to each other. I don’t know what she does all day. She never goes out. Her groceries are all delivered every week. She watches TV in her room. And now she’s got me. Kate won’t take me in. I think she’s done with me. I don’t know about Grimesy. Maybe he’s still doing her. Who knows? I heard that Dr. Pulcher’s seminars were still going, though, but I dared not show up to one. Anyway, you had to be invited, and I wasn’t expecting Dr. Pulcher to do that any time soon, was I?

I walk to Yarraville station every morning and take the train to Flinders Street and then I walk to the uni. They’re long walks but I like them. I practice my Latin poetry on the way, and I talk to the homeless blokes all along Swanston Street. I have come to the conclusion, well it’s not really a conclusion, that maybe Dr. Knappenberger was right. Maybe I don’t belong there. I’m still struggling to catch up with all the work and I’m not getting very good marks with my essays and assignments. In fact, it looks like I could fail, even in Latin. The other students, I haven’t seen what marks they’re getting, but going by the tutes, they’re a lot better than I am. They say that it’s the final exams that count, so when they come, quite a few months away yet, I’ll have to make a super human effort to get through them. They’re like the matric exams only multiplied by I don’t know how much.

*

One morning I was working really hard on forgetting Iris. She’d been in my head a lot, so as I walked to the Yarraville station, I started singing hymns to myself, the ones I’d learned in Sunday school what seemed like eons ago. I kept at it, all the way to the station, the train, and then Flinders street where the homeless buggers were hanging around the station and in the doorways on the way up Swanston Street. I had to work really hard at remem¬bering some of them, but after a few days, they came to me easily, and I sang away, no noise mind you, I didn’t want people looking at me thinking I was a religious freak. Then, as I walked up Swanston Street, shivering like buggery from the drizzle and cold wind, I found myself standing in front of the Church of Christ, a tiny little church nestled beneath a big office building, its tiny turrets sticking up like they were giving it the finger. I was singing Onward Christian Soldiers and just finishing the last verse and then to my favourite chorus that I would sing over and over again:

Onward, Christian soldiers,

Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus,

Going on before!

I pushed at the old red door, but it was locked. And I don’t know why until this day, I started banging on the door and kept at it until my knuckles were sore. And then, just as I was up to March¬ing as to war, the door creaked open and a bloke with a pale, very smooth face, kind of like a much younger version of Dr. Pulcher, poked his head out.

“The Church is closed to tourists,” he said.

“I’m not a tourist,” I said, “I’m a uni student.”

“So, come back when we are open for service.”

And suddenly I blurted out, and to this day I just can’t under¬stand where it came from, “I want to talk with Jesus!”

The bloke looked me up and down and saw a Latin book in my hands. Yes, that’s right. I’d given up on my kitbag and now just carried my books in my hands, like the other uni students do.

“All right,” he said, “but just for a moment, mind. We don’t want any tramps coming in here.”

I slipped inside and made my way straight to the front. I’d only been in one other church ever, and that was the little Baptist church behind the hall where I went to Sunday school and did my matric exams. That was a simple little church made of wood panelling and frames, weatherboard on the outside, painted cream. This church was made of stone, of course, much older, but it was just as simple inside, except for the pews that were all really heavy and polished, and the wood floor just the same. The walls were painted white, and the long and thin stained-glass windows pretty simple, disappointing because there were no scenes from the bible, just floral designs mostly. I sat in the front pew, and my eyes came to rest on a tiny crucifix nailed to the wall above the small wooden altar. But instead of Jesus talking to me, it was Flo, for God’s sake. I’d lost control of my head. Gees, I really needed Kate.

I looked around me and was relieved to see that Flo was definitely not in the church, only the bloke who let me in. He was standing at the back of the church with his arms folded. And then I broke out in song, the song of Sunday school:

Jesus loves me this I know

For the bible tells me so –

My voice floated through the dark ceiling beams exploding against the slate roof, showering the entire church with pearls of song. At that very moment, I felt, like they say, born again, my childhood innocence resurrected. There was only one witness, the stranger, the bloke who had let me in. Except, when I looked around, he was gone. I continued my song:

Little ones to Him belong,

They are weak but He is strong.

I dropped my books on the floor and ripped the clothes off my body. “This is who I am! Take me Jesus!” I raised my hands, stretching my body as high as it would let me, standing on tip toe, reaching, reaching for the sky, almost yelling:

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

For a very brief moment, I felt free, free of my life and all the troubles of the past. Was this what they called absolution? Did I hear him call my name? Naked, I ran forward and grabbed at the crucifix, unable to reach it.

And then I looked down and I saw I was truly naked. And I thought of Kate. What was this? How could I stand starkers before Christ himself? Embarrassed, I dropped down on my haunches, hugging myself tightly. Ashamed, it was, as if I’d exposed myself in front of everyone I’d ever known. If they knew what I’d just done, they’d never let me live it down. The only person who’d understand, it pained me to admit, was Flo, that sad sinner from my other world. I crawled back to the pew and gathered up my books. One of them was Plato’s Republic. I gripped it so hard I almost wrenched it in two. If the other students in my Philosophy tute saw me now, gees, I’d be the laughing stock. Plato couldn’t talk to Jesus, could he, Dad or Dads?

Father, whoever you are, can you forgive me?