The Delinquents Page 5

  Mrs. Lovell went into the usual old mother-love routine, with the manager echoing her like a Greek chorus.

  ‘At any rate,’ she concluded, ‘I do not propose to have a common shearer dictate to me.’

  The common shearer laughed in her face.

  ‘Don’t make yourself sound silly,’ he advised. ‘That kind of talk went out with buttoned boots. And what’s so great about you. You’re just a phoney kidding phonies. You haven’t got education or class or self-respect or even common sense. I come from where there are still a few real ladies kicking around, and they’re recognized as such even if they work like horses—so I know. Now get hold of this poor kid and bath her and get her to bed.’

  Lola was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, wailing and disconsolate.

  ‘I want Brownie,’ she wept. ‘I want Brownie.’

  She put out a hand and clung frantically to the shearer begging:

  ‘Don’t go, Clancy. Don’t go. I’m so miserable, I’m so lonely and frightened and cold.’

  Next morning Mrs. Lovell and Lola had a talk. It was the only talk they ever had that was shorn of all mother to daughter trimmings. It was quite a brutal little conversation, Mrs. Lovell began it by asking Lola if she had any desire to do anything decent with her life. Lola said, what was the use? Mrs. Lovell said that she had apparently been mistaken in her daughter. She had hoped for a decent life for her. That was why she had made sacrifices to send her to expensive schools. She had wanted her to meet the right people, become educated for a good job (private secretary, doctor’s receptionist…), and in the long run marry someone who would provide her with all the things that Lola’s father had never provided for Lola’s mother, etc., etc. However, it now seemed that all maternal sacrifice had been in vain; Lola must just be bad like her father.

  ‘That’s it, I’m bad,’ said Lola.

  Mrs. Lovell flared into impatience at this carefully calculated insolence.

  ‘Well, I don’t advise you to be too bad while you’re under sixteen and still in my care,’ she concluded, ‘because I’d just as soon put you in a home for uncontrollable girls as look at you. When you’re sixteen I wash my hands of you. You can please yourself what you do.’

  ‘I’ll keep you up to that,’ said Lola.

  Then her mother hit her across the face and threw herself down on the bed sobbing.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Lola?’ she cried. ‘I look at you and wonder what goes on in that mean little inside of yours, and I just don’t know. I don’t know you at all.’

  ‘Why should you?’ thought Lola. She felt a little sorry for the woman sobbing on the bed, but she could not be bothered with talking to her. It flashed through her mind that she could say: ‘I waited alone all the years of my childhood for you to come and get to know me,’ but she decided it would be pointless now; and at any rate it might give her mother the satisfaction of thinking that she had been hurt. And had she been hurt? She did not know herself. She turned away from her mother and looked out of the window.

  The woman who had picked up Brownie was a prostitute called Jan. Or rather she called herself Jan, but that has become a popular name in the profession of late years. Her name could quite possibly have been Ethel or Gwen. In common with most prostitutes, she had a pathetic story. Hers was that she was the daughter of a wealthy family in Sydney and had been well educated; but having had her face badly smashed around in a car accident she had decided not to care any more, and had apparently chosen prostitution as a means of going to waste which involved the least work and the most free drinks. She stuck to her story with a wealth of detail and it is certain that she spoke well when she so desired. Apart from that she was a big, sloppy woman in her early thirties and looking older, with a badly broken nose and a collection of angry-looking scars along her left jaw.

  When she and Brownie awoke it was already early afternoon and they were both still a little drunk.

  ‘No point in you going back to your ship today, love,’ said Jan. So they repaired to the ‘Grand’ to pull themselves together with whisky and soda. Then they went out for a hamburger and came back for some solid drinking. Brownie being out of money, Jan paid. He dragged himself back on board the next morning and was not even logged. His mates had covered up for him, feeling that every deck boy is entitled to one bender on a prostitute’s money.

  ‘It’s part of your education,’ said the bosun.

  She used to wait for him at the dock gate after that and he found himself the recipient of much ribald congratulation.

  ‘How’s our deck boy?’ said his older shipmates. ‘He’s got a whore keeping him.’

  Brownie felt very big. He only regretted that he frequently found Jan so very repulsive.

  The next time the Dalton got into Brisbane she gave him a watch. However, some of her professional colleagues told him that it had been stolen from one of her customers, so Brownie, always a fair-minded lad, at least where his own sex was concerned, made her return it. Frantically she maintained that she loved him, and twice she infected him with the least dignified of parasites—lice. This caused so much merriment amongst his shipmates to whom he went for advice (and some very macabre advice was forthcoming) that he made a great joke of it also, though secretly he was disgusted and horrified to the very depths of his adolescent puritanical soul. The cleansing process almost caused him to vomit, nevertheless it had to be. Setting aside such jocular suggestions as castration and cauterization, he decided upon insecticide, and being too shy to walk into a chemist and demand blue ointment he performed the purification with Mortein plus. It is one hundred per cent effective, but has the one disadvantage that it removes anything up to about three layers of skin along with the parasites. So much for the first time. On the second occasion that he found himself infected he was more than a little annoyed.

  ‘She sure seems to be the careless type,’ said the bosun. ‘Don’t you find it a bit off putting?’

  Brownie did, and the next time that he and Jan took to bed he pleaded alcohol and went to sleep. When he woke up he dressed straight away, took his shoes under his arm and sneaked out. Apparently Jan never forgave the slight to her professional pride, for when he was back in Brisbane a couple of months later she came down to the ship all friendliness and relatively spruce looking: ‘If Brownie would give her a couple of quid for a drink,’ she said, ‘and a quid for the hotel room, she would fix everything and meet him at the dock gates that evening.’

  Brownie, on whom the celibate life had been weighing heavily, gave her the money and that was the last he saw of her for many a long day. From then on he ignored women till they became a matter of utmost physical necessity, and all the time he kept on looking for Lola.

  *

  He found her at last in Melbourne on a wet August day about twelve months after he went to sea. It was pay-day and he was in the ‘Havana’ wine lounge getting drunk. It was his practice to get drunk on payday; and as he had a grown man’s capacity and a deck boy’s pay, he drank wine, which was cheaper and quicker. And then he saw her. The ‘Havana’ was in a basement and Lola came down the stairs with a big, wide-shouldered girl whose hair was dyed an unfortunate shade of red, and they sat at a table near the wall and ordered a bottle of dry sherry.

  Coming in they had not seen Brownie, who was in a corner by the bar, and now they sat with their backs to him. Brownie’s first reaction was that it could not be Lola. She looked terrible; half starved and sick and grubby and wretched, and she had blonded her hair, which did not suit her, and it was going black along the parting.

  ‘God,’ he thought, as he made his way between the tables, ‘what have they done to her?’

  Now he was standing behind her and he put his hand on her shoulder and said:

  ‘Do you mind if I join you girls?’

  She turned and looked into his face, and immediately she stood up and he took her in his arms. She was weeping and laughing and exclaiming all at once:

  ‘Oh, God, Brownie, it can�
��t be you, it can’t be you. Oh, Brownie, Brownie, darling.’ And then to the other girl, ‘Kath, this is Brownie.’

  ‘Hell, I’ve heard plenty about you,’ said Kath.

  Lola moved around to the wall side of the table, where the seating was a long settle-type bench covered in red velvet and running the length of the room. Brownie moved in beside her and they sat very close, holding hands. Kath said:

  ‘Look, I think I’ll go over and collect your bottle, otherwise some thirsty bum will whizz it off.’

  When she came back Lola introduced her:

  ‘This is my girl friend Kath Thomson.’

  Brownie smiled politely and surveyed her with distaste. She was the type he particularly disliked, big and hard-faced, with square hands like a man.

  ‘How did you get down this far?’ he asked Lola.

  ‘I followed the fleet,’ said Lola, which Kath seemed to think extremely funny.

  ‘Not Pussas, I hope,’ said Brownie.

  ‘Pussas! We wouldn’t have them on our mind,’ said Kath.

  Lola leaned one arm on his shoulder and sipped her sherry with her body pressed against his.

  ‘Are you a big merchant-service sailor now?’ she asked and he heard with delight that the sing song had not quite gone from her voice.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re just about Captain now, I suppose.’

  ‘In two months time I’ll be a bucko.’

  ‘J.C. a bloody deck boy,’ said Kath. ‘I thought you were older.’

  ‘He’s old enough to take care of me, aren’t you, Brownie?’ said Lola. ‘Look I’m real warm now.’ She wriggled happily in his arm. ‘That’s the first time I’ve been warm since I came to this lousy hole.’

  It was small wonder that she was not finding the Melbourne winter very snug, for she was most unsuitably dressed for it in a narrow black skirt of a very light woollen material and a not very fresh-looking embroidered blouse, with a draw string through the neck. She wore the drawstring loose, and quite an amount of breast was disclosed. Over this she wore a fawn duffle jacket with no hood. It was somewhat too large for her, but it was a good warm jacket; however, in a Melbourne winter one warm garment is no more than a daisy in a bull’s mouth. The ensemble was finished off with bare legs and ankle-strap shoes, and a huge shoulder-strap bag of black patent leather with a plastic clasp that was vaguely heraldic.

  ‘I’ll look after you and keep you warm too,’ said Brownie, ‘if you still want me.’

  ‘Oh, Brownie,’ she put down her glass and looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I still want you? Haven’t you always been the only one I ever loved?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kath, ‘she’s always talking about Brownie.’

  She poured out another drink all round.

  ‘Have another drink on the happy occasion,’ she said.

  Brownie looked down into his glass.

  ‘I don’t need it now,’ he said.

  ‘If you two want to go off to bed or somewhere, don’t mind me,’ said Kath. Brownie looked at Lola.

  ‘What about a meal—it’s nearly five o’clock? You too, Kath,’ he added in the tone of voice which means ‘accept if you dare.’

  ‘I’m not leaving all this lovely liquor,’ declared Kath. ‘Now run along, kiddies, and be happy.’

  Lola hesitated.

  ‘How will you get on, Kath, for a meal?’ she asked.

  Kath eyed three National Servicemen who were drinking at a nearby table.

  ‘If those guys haven’t the price of a feed between them,’ she said, ‘then I’m slipping.’

  Out in the street Lola shivered and pulled the duffle jacket around her.

  ‘Food!’ she said with glee. ‘Wacko! Come on, Brownie. Tonight we eat. Let’s go to the “Crown”, I want to show you to a few people.’

  Seated in the ‘Crown’, Lola ate her way through chicken soup, steak and oysters, pineapple fritters and finished off with coffee and toast. She seemed to know every second girl in the place and hailed them all excitedly, telling them all: ‘This is Brownie!’ And everyone seemed to have heard of him.

  As she ate, her face lost its pinched and exhausted look and Brownie became aware that she had developed a certain head-turning quality—whether it was the long-legged, stilt-heeled walk, or the upthrusting breasts, or the sluttish-looking mop of hair, or a combination of all these, he did not know, but he began to feel great pride in his rakish-looking little love as she sat there drinking her coffee and smoking a cigarette. He reached out across the clutter of cups and plates and took her hand between his:

  ‘Have you got somewhere to take me, honey?’ he asked. She laughed and patted his cheek.

  ‘Naturally, Brownie,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to come courting. We settled all that under the frangipani trees on the banks of the Burnett River, remember?’

  She stood up, put the strap of her bag over her shoulder, turned the collar of her coat up around her face, and put her hands deep in the pockets.

  ‘Follow me, sailor!’ she said.

  Her room was at the top of a house in a terrace in a back street in St. Kilda, and it was the room that Brownie might have expected—small and mean, with damp on the walls and clothes on the floor and the bed unmade. Lola closed the door and leaned against it, facing him, and he saw now that there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Brownie,’ she said, ‘I know it’s terrible and I know I look dreadful, but I’ve been so sick, and maybe I haven’t always done the right thing; but, Brownie, I loved you, I loved you all the time.’

  Brownie looked at her, at the thinness of her face and the hollows around her neck, at the streaky blonde hair and the nicotine stains on her fingers.

  ‘God!’ he thought, ‘she looks as though she’s been starving.’

  ‘Brownie, say you still want me. For God’s sake say you still want me.’

  ‘I still want you,’ he said. ‘I want you and love you more than I ever did before in all my life.’

  It was midnight. Lola and Brownie had been down the street to buy hamburgers and coke at the all-night hamburger bar at the Junction and now they were back warm and contented in bed. Lola munched her hamburger, curled up in Brownie’s arm, her head resting on his shoulder.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be good,’ she said, ‘to be a cat and just spend your life eating and sleeping and making love?’

  ‘Some cats find the alleys a bit cold at times,’ said Brownie.

  ‘I believe you, Brownie. Believe me boy, I believe you.’

  ‘Darling, where were you working?’

  ‘Well really I’m not working anywhere just now.’

  ‘What work do you do, darling?’

  ‘Last job I was a waitress. I was in a big place in Collins Street but I got two days notice when the ’flu was coming on me. “You look bad,” the Manageress said. I could see she didn’t want to give me sick pay so she was giving me orders to balls me up all day and then in the end she said I was insolent.’

  ‘Were you?’ he laughed in the darkness and tightened his arms around her body.

  ‘Of course I was.’ She laughed too. ‘So in the end she told me “take two days notice”, and I said “pay me off now, I’ll be too sick to work in your lousy drum by tomorrow”.’

  ‘How long ago was that, love?’

  ‘Two weeks ago—yesterday was the first day I was up and then I only went out for some rolls and butter and that, and I felt so sick I went back to bed again.’

  ‘Who looked after you—got your meals and that?’

  ‘Teddy Langley used to give me tea and toast in the mornings, and sometimes, nearly every night, Kath would bring me a pie, or fish and chips or something, and she’d heat them on Teddy Langley’s gas ring. A few times, though, she went off with some guy or got so rotten she couldn’t come.’ Lola laughed. ‘Once she brought a soldier up here and we had crayfish and beer and all, and the beer sent me to sleep, and when I woke up Kath and the soldier w
ere both in with me, both naked as the day they were born, and the soldier started to go the grope on me, so I woke Kath and said “Do your own dirty work”.’

  ‘Very funny,’ said Brownie puritanically. ‘I don’t like Kath.’

  ‘Oh, Brownie, don’t be hard to get on with—we all have to live the best we can, and she’s a good friend.’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘Well, she fed me when I was sick and got the doctor when I was delirious.’

  ‘Gee, darling, I didn’t know you were that sick.’

  ‘I wasn’t too bad, sweetheart. Just I don’t seem to have any resistance to colds. Anyway, the doctor prescribed penicillin. It’s free medicine you know, and after that I got on fine.’

  ‘You’re looking skinny though, darling. Like you haven’t had anything solid to eat for a long time.’

  ‘I’ve got by all right.’

  ‘What were you going to do tonight if I hadn’t met you?’

  ‘Like Kath said—pick up a couple of guys to take us to dinner and then maybe go on to the Troc.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you!’

  ‘Oh, Brownie darling,’ her voice was beseeching now, ‘life’s so sad most of the time, and we might as well try and enjoy ourselves while we can. If you could only know how cold and lonely and miserable and frightened I’ve been most of the time.’

  ‘Shush, darling,’ he patted her back gently, reassuring a child. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve been no lilywhite myself. Nothing’s changed between you and me. Nothing’s changed at all. We’ll be all right now; but we must keep together from now on.’

  She began to sob with her head against his shoulder and after a while she fell asleep.

  They arranged to meet at six-thirty the next evening, after Brownie finished work. Brownie arrived on the steps of Flinders Street Station at six o’clock and at half-past six she was not there. She had not arrived by seven so he caught a taxi down to St. Kilda. He was almost sick with disappointment and apprehension. ‘If I find her and Kath drinking with a couple of Nashos it will just serve me right,’ he told himself.