Читать книгу Choices - Jeff Edwards - Страница 19

Dan

Okay, I said to myself as I paddled out through the surf, my life has turned to shit yet again, but I’ve managed to survive, and although it might be harder this time, I know I will get through. After all, it’s been happening to me all my life.

The waves today were small and inconsistent, and there were too many riders out to make surfing a comfortable proposition, but I had no wish to return to the beach, and sat astride my board letting the sun and the waves lull me into a feeling of calm distraction.

My mind wandered back to the first time that life had kicked me in the guts, and I could hear the shouting matches that had accompanied my father’s drunken return from his nightly sessions at the local RSL club.

Both he and his brother, my Uncle Bill, had served in Vietnam, and I used to hear my mother’s screaming accusations that the pair had been using their forced service in that unpopular war as an excuse to drink more. ‘You and your drunken mates are pathetic,’ she accused him shrilly. ‘Anyone would think that you and your brother were the only ones to ever go to war. You make me sick.’

The drinking finally caught up with my father when after a few too many drinks at lunchtime one day, he had returned to the building site where he was working and fell from a badly maintained scaffolding to his death five stories below.

Despite the acrimonious marriage, my mother never fully recovered from the sudden loss, and turned more and more to the bottle herself. At the age of ten, and as the only child, I found myself having to take care of not only myself but my mother as well.

Dad’s friends at the RSL came to my assistance through Legacy, an organisation of former military personnel who voluntarily stepped forward to aid the families of deceased former soldiers, seamen and airmen. My school expenses were paid for, and sometimes one of the men would come around to take me away for the weekend. I’d go camping or fishing with him and his family, and I looked forward to these outings as an opportunity to escape the daily grind of making sure that my mother was fed and the house cleaned. She often overlooked these necessities in favour of downing more alcohol.

I had walked in the door after one such outing when my Legacy ‘uncle’ and I found my mother propped up in front of our television, her eyes were wide open but she was as dead as a doornail.

I was told later that she had always suffered from a congenital heart defect and that assisted by the alcohol it had finally given out on her.

So it was that I was sent to live with dad’s brother and my only living relative, Uncle Bill. Unfortunately, Uncle Bill was not the sort of person who took easily to instant parenthood, particularly a gangling pubescent thirteen-year-old.

He lived in a war veterans home unit in Maroubra, and if he was not working out on the roads for the Roads and Traffic Authority then he could be found propping up the bar in the Maroubra RSL.

Uncle Bill had never married, and was never likely to do so. He had the attitude that women were useful for some minor duties such as working behind the bar at the RSL, or in its kitchen where he ate most of his evening meals, but any contact with a woman on a personal level was totally beyond him.

As a result I found myself once again spending most of my time at home, alone and fending for myself.

I had to change schools and was now enrolled at Maroubra Boys High School where I immediately found that, as an outsider, I was never going to be accepted on an equal footing by my peers. Most of the boys had grown up in the area, and being a beach suburb, had been engaged in the Surf Life Saving movement from the time they could walk. Through the Nippers programme these boys had progressed to earning their bronze medallions and graduated to full lifesavers, protecting the many visitors to Maroubra Beach from drowning. They patrolled the sand, ordering bathers to swim between the flags, and keeping the surfboard riders well out of the protected areas.

Without having qualified for the bronze medallion I was automatically designated as not surf club material and therefore not worth knowing by my fellow classmates. However, being a social outcast opened up a whole new life to me.

I gravitated to an area further down the beach to where the board riders congregated. Here, I came to make a nodding acquaintance with a couple of other boys from high school. Unlike the heavily regimented surf lifesavers, these boys had long, sun bleached hair and a very laid-back attitude to life, and when one of them offered to lend me his surfboard, I knew I had found my niche in the beach scene.

After many futile attempts, and much derision from my new friends, I finally caught my first wave. The feelings of joy and triumph I experienced made those short few seconds the most important of my life so far, and I craved more.

‘You can’t keep borrowing my board,’ said my new friend Bob. ‘Get your own.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to buy my own. I’ll have to get a job. Where did you get your money from?’ I asked, knowing he didn’t work, and that his parents were as short of money as my Uncle Bill.

‘I found it,’ he smiled.

‘Bull!’ I exclaimed. ‘No one loses that sort of money.’

‘I’ll show you,’ he winked, as he stood up and picked up his towel. ‘Follow me, but don’t come too close. Watch what I do.’

I kept a few paces behind as he swung the towel around his neck and strolled casually toward the crowded area of the beach between the flags. Here, he moved slowly amongst the crowd, apparently looking for a spot where he could spread his towel and sunbake. I noticed a young family stand up and tiptoe gingerly through the hot sand toward the water.

Seeing his opportunity, Bob spread his towel on the sand close to their bags, and lay down making himself comfortable. He remained there, scanning the bathers at the water edge, until he saw the family coming out of the surf. While they were still some way off he stood up, picked up his towel, and wandered back down the beach with me close behind.

Back at our usual spot, he unwrapped his towel to reveal a wallet and a woman’s purse. ‘Take only the cash,’ he warned me. ‘Leave the rest either on the beach or stick it in a garbage bin, but whatever you do make sure you are not seen.’

I was both shocked and excited at what he had done. I nodded my head. ‘I’d never be able to do something like that.’

‘Of course you can. Start small. Pick a kid that’s come to the beach by themselves. They won’t have much but it’ll give you a chance to practice.’

‘I don’t really think I could.’

‘It’s easy,’ he grinned. ‘You want that board, don’t you?’

I looked out to sea and could make out the rideable sets forming out the back. I could almost feel the waxed deck of my very own board beneath my feet.

‘Tell you what,’ Bob said offering me a ten dollar note from amongst his booty, ‘I’ll give you this if you take the wallet and purse up to the road and drop them in a bin for me.’

‘They must be worth something.’

‘It’s not worth getting caught with them on you. Now take this money and go and ditch the booty.’

Without really thinking about what I was doing I took the note from his hand, and with my heart beating against my rib cage and feeling that every person within a radius of a kilometre was watching, I went about disposing of the evidence. At any moment I expected to feel the heavy hand of the law fall on my shoulder.

But it didn’t, and I now had ten dollars in my pocket.

I nearly pissed myself with excitement the first time I stole a wallet. The victim was a boy about my age, and the wallet itself was battered and scarred and contained only five dollars. Hardly enough for his fares, but I was ecstatic. I had done it!

Greed overcame my conscience and it was not long before I became the proud owner of my very first surfboard.

But once I had the board I found that there were other things that I ‘needed’, and so I continued to steal.

I also found my Uncle Bill to be a source of much needed funds. When he arrived home drunk from the RSL I would wait until he was asleep, and then remove half the money from his wallet. Most of the time he didn’t miss the money, and when he did realise that there was not as much money in his wallet as there should have been he instantly placed the blame on ‘those thieving bitches’ who worked behind the bar and refused to pay him the respect that his being a returned serviceman deserved.

My easy lifestyle came to a sudden halt when I was eventually caught by a policeman who happened to be enjoying the beach with his family and noticed my activities.

He took me by the scruff of the neck and frogmarched me down to his mates at the local police station. They, in turn, called Uncle Bill.

Not knowing what to do, my uncle passed the problem on to Legacy. Those good men paid for a solicitor to represent me, and as this was my first offence, the judge dumped a speech of utter disdain upon me and let me go home with a further warning of dire consequences if I should ever reappear before him.

When we stepped inside the front door of his home unit Uncle Bill gave me a clip behind the ears and then left me to look after myself while he went down to the RSL. There he drank himself into oblivion while complaining to his friends about the ingratitude of his thieving nephew.

I attempted to learn from my mistake, but was soon back on the beach with my towel around my neck and an eye out for a ready mark.

This time I swore to myself that I would be more careful, and I would never get caught again.

I was fortunate, and it was not until I was seventeen that the cold hand of the law was once again placed on my shoulder.

Uncle Bill was totally pissed off that he was being taken away from his precious RSL in order to collect me from the police station, and when we arrived home he vent his anger on me with a right fist to my solar plexus. I crumpled to the floor, and he kicked me in the head to highlight his message.

I was lucky to appear before a different magistrate this time but I was placed on a good behaviour bond and told to pay a hefty fine, which Legacy reluctantly paid for me on the understanding that I complete my Higher School Certificate and stay out of further trouble. I had no alternative but to agree to the arrangement.

I knew that my uncle would be waiting to extract some more pain upon me if I returned home, so I went straight down to the beach. There I smoked a joint before paddling out to enjoy the waves.

By the time I finally arrived home he had given up on me and gone down to the RSL. He stumbled home barely able to stand, and as soon as he had dropped off to sleep I emptied his wallet.

Legacy’s demand on my completing my Higher School Certificate was not a problem for me as I had always achieved high scores in my exams, and it was only when the waves at Maroubra Beach were of such high quality and begged to be ridden that caused my attendance at school to be overlooked, but I made sure to catch up on anything that I had missed in class during my absence.

For the most part I enjoyed school as it was the only place where adults actually paid any sort of attention to me. A few of the teachers were really good people and I got along well with them.

When the final results were published I achieved marks higher that even I expected. I celebrated by smoking a few joints with a surfing mate, riding the waves for the rest of the day, and then drinking well into the night.

The pair of us finally stumbled out of a pub in the city and decided the time had come to return home. ‘Have you got any money?’ Bob asked.

‘Nope,’ I replied.

‘Me either. I’ve spent every last cent I own. How are we going to get home?’

‘We’ll catch a cab,’ I replied, waving to one as it drove past. ‘Come on,’ I called as it pulled over to the kerb.

‘How are we going to pay?’ whispered Bob beside me in the back seat.

‘When we get there, open the door and run,’ I slurred knowingly.

Whether it was through fear or the fact that he could run faster, Bob was out the door of the taxi before it had a chance to come to a stop, and was disappearing into the night before I had the chance to follow.

The taxi driver was a past master at handling drunks who attempted to run rather than pay, and was out from behind his wheel and had grabbed me before I could take evasive action.

As he took a firm hold of my shirt, I reacted instinctively by throwing a drunken punch at his head and then pushing him away with all my might. The shirt tore and he landed heavily against his taxi, while I took the opportunity to make off into the dark as fast as my wobbly legs would take me.

Panic and adrenalin gave me additional speed, but in my desperation I didn’t hear the driver climb back into his taxi and casually follow after me.

As I fumbled for the key to the unit complex he watched from a short distance and as I disappeared inside my uncle’s unit he smiled. Returning to his taxi, he radioed his base, and the police were soon banging on Uncle Bill’s front door.

‘Drunken little bastard!’ the taxi driver swore, as the police dragged me outside and threw me into the rear of their patrol car.

This time Uncle Bill decided that I had gone too far and refused to pay my bail, while the solicitor from Legacy was harsh in his assessment of my chances. ‘You’re going to jail,’ he said bluntly. ‘They’re going to demand their pound of flesh this time, unless we can come up with something special.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘We give them their pound of flesh, but in a different form.’

‘What sort of “different form”?’

‘What do you think about the military?’

‘Not much. They wrecked my Dad and haven’t done much

for Uncle Bill.’

‘Well you might not think too much of the army, but as an alternative to going to jail, what do you think?’

‘That’s not much of a choice.’

‘That’s all you’ve got son, jungle green or prison greens.’

I nodded, resigned to my fate.

After a persuasive speech to the court by my solicitor, my future was decided. It was agreed that I should not become a burden to the State as long as the State could put me to good use.

When the time came for me to leave home I was surprised when Uncle Bill agreed to forego a drinking session at the RSL to take me down to the recruiting station from where the bus would take me away to basic training.

He had been nowhere to be seen when the initial paperwork had been signed and my physical had taken place, but when the day of my departure arrived he was standing outside with the car door open, motioning for me to climb inside. I thought to myself, he’s only going with me to make sure I don’t back out. He can’t wait to get rid of me.

If this was true or not I never did learn because he too died a few short months later. But before I climbed aboard the bus that would take me away he left me with some words of almost fatherly advice.

Placing one hand on each of my shoulders, he looked deep into my eyes. ‘Don’t join the grunts. No matter what you do, no matter how appealing they make the infantry sound, don’t join the grunts! Find yourself a nice safe little job behind a desk or in a garage. There are plenty of other silly buggers out there that want to be cannon fodder. Let them. Remember what the infantry did to your Dad and me. Don’t let it happen to you! ’

With those few words Uncle Bill showed more feelings for me than he had displayed in all the time I’d lived with him, and so when the time came for me to choose what corps to enter, I selected signals, and eventually ended up in Canberra.