Читать книгу Tugga's Mob - Stephen Johnson - Страница 11

It was mid-evening on Sunday before Hackett found time to indulge in more thoughts about his former travelling companions. The television news cycle was already moving on from Tugga’s demise. The follow-up story was an interview with the bar manager in Aireys Inlet who confiscated Tugga’s keys. Davy Allpress added a new subtext to the standard road safety theme of don’t drink and drive – ‘you can’t help some idiots’.

Hackett made himself comfortable in the office chair with the Volendam picture and examined the faces in more detail. Not surprisingly, he struggled to match many of the names with the faces. It was 30 years since he had spoken to most of them. He had run into several at Antipodean parties and pubs in London over the following 16 months, before returning home with a new career focus. Even the people he met post-trip were hard to recall.

The Dutch costumes in the photograph weren’t the most flattering either. The bonnets and blooming dresses almost time-shifted the girls back to another century. They covered the standard day wear of brief shorts, loose tops and summer tans. The smiles on many of the guys were more subdued than in other trip photos. It might have been from hangovers – they’d been on a brewery tour the day before, followed by the Red-Light District – or it could have been the 19th century studio backdrop that made them act more conservative than usual. Certainly, three of the girls that Hackett had known intimately on the trip looked demure in village costumes, compared to nights rolling around naked on tent floors and other impromptu shagging venues. He recalled their names more easily: Judy, Denise and Helen.

Helen had been the first and the easiest to lay. It was the second night in Paris after a fun session at the bar a few hundred metres from the camp site. Hackett noted on day one that she was attached to the big fella’s group, but no one seemed to claim any proprietary rights to her – she was one of the gang.

Tugga, Drew and Gerry were casting eyes everywhere as well, sizing up who was willing to play on tour and when was the best time to strike. It was a different era and morality from Hackett’s present-day life in Melbourne. Most passengers were away from home, work, families and friends for the first time and everything was a new adventure to be embraced. A tour guide from another company succinctly summarised the mood one evening in the Zombie Bar in Florence. He outlined the fundamentals that he believed applied to most trips: ‘passengers hang up their coats, their brains and then their morals – for the duration.’ The mantra for passengers and road crew was, ‘What happens on tour, stays on tour’.

The moral ambiguity of sexual freedom while touring didn’t suit everyone. A few settled into monogamous arrangements while others continued to play the field. Helen and Hackett fell into that second category. In between shagging each other when the mood suited them, they enjoyed the company of other passengers. That was how Judy, Denise and two other girls from different tour buses had ended up sharing a tent, or Hackett’s spread-out sleeping bag, during the trip. It had been one of the most liberating times of Hackett’s life, details of which had only ever been shared with Ferdy after returning to civilisation in London. His friend had been blasé. Ferdy’s business venture had netted him £20,000 while Hackett spent £3000 living the Playboy lifestyle on a budget tour. Marianne had never budgeted anything in her life; her European visits were always five-star. Hackett, therefore, was cautious about sharing experiences from his first European adventure with his wife. He told her nothing.

Hackett looked more closely at the faces of Helen, Judy and Denise; his three Kiwi birds. Of the three, Judy was the stand-out: an attractive blonde with a fresh-faced country look and a megawatt smile. From a farming family, Judy was on the trip of her dreams. Hackett recalled that Judy fell in love with Europe via cultural documentaries and books as a teenager. Ancient castles, medieval abbeys and bustling cities were such a contrast to her rural life in New Zealand. She was determined to visit the most famous landmarks before marriage and children tied her to a farm existence in Waikato. Judy was supposed to travel with a girlfriend, but she’d cancelled just before the trip because of a family problem. Hackett remembered Judy saying after one intimate encounter that she was glad there was no one to report back to her boyfriend – or parents. Raven-haired Helen was originally from Rotorua. That’s where she met Tugga and the lads before moving to Sydney for better jobs and pay in the early ’80s; along with tens of thousands of her contemporaries. She was still a Kiwi at heart, Hackett remembered, but was already being influenced by the darker side of Sydney. She always talked about getting stoned. He was surprised to learn that she was bisexual as well and had made attempts to bed other girls on the trip without any apparent success. Denise was another sweet mid-20s girl from Waikato. Hackett didn’t consider Denise as cute as Judy, but she was a lot of fun and up for a bonk almost anywhere. God knows how I ever found time for those American girls on the Contiki trip in Venice!

Hackett looked at more faces and tried to match them with names. He would make a guess and then turn the picture over to see if he was correct. Not all the passengers put down their full names or home addresses. Many picked up tour nicknames for silly habits, stunts or mishaps. These trip monikers were more commonly used on the picture, although some had bracketed the nicknames with the ones assigned by their parents at birth. Tugga’s name was there. It merely said: Tugga Tancred, NZ.

Hackett never learned the origins of Tugga’s nickname or much more about his New Zealand life, apart from his early rugby prowess. That was reaffirmed by Drew and Gerry who’d watched Tugga smash scrums since high school. Tugga had always been their leader and he decided their daily agenda. If the itinerary didn’t interest Tugga – ‘not another crumbling church’ – he would locate a bar and settle in with Drew and Gerry to drink beer, schnapps, grappa or anything else alcoholic. They made sure the bar was close to where the bus was parked or the camp site. Hackett found himself regularly drawn to Tugga and his compatriots after his own excursions.

No wonder the other passengers considered me part of Tugga’s Mob.

The Volendam picture made Hackett think about the end of the trip, when most of these details were written down. Hackett had to admit much of that final 24 hours in Amsterdam was fuzzy. He was wasted, like never before, or since, and considered himself lucky that Ferdy was in London to meet the returning bus, otherwise he wouldn’t have found their flat again.

Hackett’s last night on the trip in Amsterdam was spent enjoying copious amounts of space cake, a cannabis-fuelled high that obliterated several hours from his existence. He had no idea what happened. Like most of the passengers, Hackett was ignorant of the strengths of the cake offerings in cafés and the delayed hit from the cannabis. No buzz arrived after the first samplings, so they pressed on into La La Land. Luckily, eight of the tour group and the driver/guide abstained from the cake feast. They spent the rest of the night rounding up the new space cadets and herding them back to the camp site. Hackett had one recurring memory, when the dry horrors kicked in, of a female yelling that she couldn’t breathe. Another passenger reassured the screamer she was still alive because the whole camp site could hear her.

Consequently, many of the space cadets were physically present on the last day to help pack up the tents, but mentally their brains were still in another galaxy. Hackett was earthbound, so firmly connected to the turf he couldn’t rise from it. His limbs didn’t have bones anymore; they had turned to jelly. He had preceded the space cake binge with a long booze session with Tugga’s Mob in the camp bar. That left Hackett without energy to drag himself from his tent to assist with the packing duties. Occasionally a face would appear at the tent flap to rouse or motivate him, but to no avail. The packing continued around him until it came time for his tent to be folded and loaded into the bus. Suddenly he found himself tipped upside down into blinding light. He heard the laughter without any sympathy. Bloody Aussies – can’t hold their piss or their cake.

Somehow Hackett scrambled together his possessions and shoved them into his backpack. Through bleary eyes he noticed his copy of the Volendam picture dumped beside his kit. A kind soul had obviously taken his picture to the group information exchange. That was appreciated. However, he noticed for his details they had merely written: Andreas, Space Cadet, London or Melbourne. He wondered if that was the same on all the other pictures.

It hadn’t concerned him at the time, that no one on the trip probably knew his proper name. And it certainly wasn’t a problem now; he didn’t want any of those former companions turning up on the doorstep of his South Yarra villa wanting a bed for old time’s sake. The nickname ‘Andreas’ stuck from day one when they were all introducing themselves on the bus microphone. Hackett revealed his birth name was Andreas, in honour of his family’s German heritage, although he preferred to be called Andrew. Naturally, that was enough for a busload of Aussies and Kiwis to take the piss by calling him Andreas for the duration.

Hackett pulled over an A4 notebook and wrote down the names he considered worthy of a Google search for old time’s sakes: Andrew (Drew) Harvey, Gerry Daly, Helen Franks – the other members of Tugga’s Mob. He also wrote down Judy Williams and Denise Howard, the trip girlfriends. Luckily their surnames were included on the back of the picture because Hackett couldn’t recall them. He didn’t bother listing the Contiki girls from Venice, given he couldn’t even remember their first names.

What a party place that Venice camp site was.

Hackett’s first port of call when he researched someone prior to a business meeting was LinkedIn. Facebook was next on the list as it contained pictures and more personal details that often proved helpful. It would reveal families, friends, hobbies and interests – all good background information.

If Hackett ever wanted more leverage in negotiations he would turn to Google for the dirt. The most salacious stories sat higher in the pecking order because of the volume of hits.

Hackett remembered Drew’s stocky build, thick brows and constant struggles with the values of the various European currencies. He believed LinkedIn wouldn’t be much help on this occasion and went straight to Google.

A heartbeat after typing in the name, the world-wide search engine produced 6,430,000 results. At the top of the list were the Drew Harvey profiles on Facebook. Next were the Top 10 Drew Harvey profiles on LinkedIn. Then there was a personal website and a Wikipedia listing: definitely not Hackett’s man.

He could speed up the search with a couple of keywords, but Hackett always liked the numbers that Google threw at him: 6,430,000 results with a Drew Harvey connection. Big numbers like that were exciting, especially when viewed online in his bank account. With a couple of deft taps, he refined the search to news pages and topics that might be more pertinent, starting with New Zealand sites.

Tugga’s move to Australia had surprised Hackett, particularly after the big fella spent seven weeks singing the praises of the All Blacks. Tugga, along with Drew and Gerry, loathed rugby league and Australian Rules. Games for sissies. They all harped on about the Bledisloe Cup, an annual trans-Tasman battle, reports of which rarely migrated beyond Sydney and Brisbane. Hackett doubted that Drew had abandoned the All Blacks and crossed the ditch to set up residence in Australia. A few minutes later his assumption was close to confirmation, but the Google discovery was still a shock.

Hackett found a death notice for a Drew Harvey listed in an Auckland newspaper in September. The age of the deceased – 54, coincided with Hackett’s memory. The guy in the online report was a family man and the obituary listed affectionate tributes from his wife, three children and work colleagues.

The Drew Harvey in Europe had been a rough diamond and didn’t have much success with women on the trip. So much so he couldn’t resist throwing a few snide and obviously envious remarks when he saw Hackett emerge from a tent with Judy, Helen or Denise in the mornings. If this was the same Drew in the obit, he might have eventually found a good, or desperate, woman to love him.

Hackett read that Drew died in a tragic accident on 31 August. He checked the online newspaper in case it featured a story. The accident rated a mention and a picture, which confirmed it was the same Drew Harvey he knew. Thirty years since Europe and his face was still identifiable as Tugga’s first lieutenant. Drew had aged better than Tugga – laughter lines around his eyes instead of bags beneath – perhaps the benefits of a loving family. But they hadn’t saved him from being turned into fish bait – like Tugga. Hackett focused on the news report.