Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

‹‹Contents››

Reasons to remember 1967-the release of Sergeant Pepper, the Six Day War, the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the drowning of Harold Holt. I remember it because that was the year Astrid and I nearly got married.

My life had been going along in two and three-year zigs and zags — two years in the army, two years at university, three as an insurance claims investigator. I had a flat in North Sydney and I was doing all right-people were always burning things down and cheating in various ways that needed to be uncovered to protect the other people who played the game straight. That was how I looked at it. I had energy to burn and I straightened out certain problems for friends. I also did an occasional bit of bodyguarding on the side, like for the 1966 Bob Dylan tour, although I never got closer than twenty feet to the man himself.

I met Astrid in early ‘67 at an anti-Vietnam rally. I was along for the ride, to see if any of the speakers and rallyers knew what they were talking about. Some did. Astrid was tall and thin and blonde and she stood out in a fairly unwashed crowd like a swan among ducks. Like most people, she was surprised to learn that the war I’d fought in, the Malayan Emergency, had ended only seven years before. I had scars, cynicism and experience. She had enthusiasm, idealism and a thirst for knowledge. She was from Wahroonga- selective high school, Fine Arts degree from Sydney; I was from Maroubra, suburb and school, University of New South Wales drop-out. She worked for a publisher. I read the odd book. A perfect match.

She moved into my flat and we had a big party because Astrid was saying goodbye to her North Shore origins. Her widowed mother and my sister got along fine. Our friends, hers from the university and the publishing game, mine from the army, two cops and Clem Carter who went to gaol soon after although he was innocent, did likewise. A good party. We even went off to the Blue Mountains for a sort of non-honeymoon and then it was back to work. Busy lives, dynamite sex on the pill, boozy Italian dinners. A kind of trial marriage. A magic time.

The first non-routine job that came along after I took up with Astrid was weird from the jump. A man named Lawrence Bean, who’d been referred to me by a man I’d saved from going to prison by proving he hadn’t torched his factory, arrived at the flat with a proposition. He operated a nightclub off Darlinghurst Road. ‘It’s going to be the top R ‘n’ R spot in the Cross,’ he said.

‘Rock ‘n’ Roll?’

He laughed and shook his head. He was a small man, about fifty, with hair that waved tightly back across his bat-eared skull. He had a Jimmy Durante nose in danger of becoming a W.C. Fields. He was a constant, nervy smoker. I was a smoker myself in those days, rolling them, using them to relax and as an aid to thought. Lawrie, as he insisted on being called, used them to fuel some inner fire.

‘No, mate. Haven’t you heard? The Yanks are coming! Rest and Recreation. The town’s going to be full of GIs with greenbacks to burn.’

I’d heard about it, in a vague sort of a way, but it hadn’t meant much to me. It had happened before, in the Second World War, and the country had survived, although there’d been some casualties-the women strangled in the Melbourne ‘brown out’ murders, a few soldiers killed in brawls, the good-time girls who were the victims of botched abortions. We were all more sophisticated now. What was the problem?

Lawrie mashed out his Rothmans and lit another immediately. ‘My place is called the Rocky Mountain Bar.’

‘Cosmopolitan,’ I said.

He ignored that. ‘I’ve got American beers-Pabst Blue Label, Budweiser, Schlitz-you name it.’

‘Lone Star,’ I said.

‘Huh? Never mind. You see my point. When those thirsty fighting boys, so far from home, get here they’re going to find familiar bottles and, if you’ll excuse the joke, familiar women. Hah hah.’

‘Hah,’ I said. ‘Rough guessing your mark-up, Lawrie, but I’d say you’re about to become a very rich man.’

He sucked gloomily on the Rothmans. ‘I thought so, too. Until I started getting trouble from someone who should be doing the same thing himself. Shit, there’s enough in this for everyone. Do you know how much those poor bastards… those brave boys, get paid?’

I shook my head. Everything was more casual in those days, remember. You wrote fewer things down, took what money you could in cash, worried less about rules and regulations. Astrid was proving expensive and my salary was being stretched. ‘Get to the point, Lawrie.’

‘There’s a pub opposite my place called the Macquarie, maybe you know it?’

‘I’ve seen it.’

‘Bloke who’s taken it over is doing it up-new carpet, paint job, lights. That’d be OK, improve the tone, ‘cept this bloke’s an army nut. He’s going to fit one of the bars out like an army mess — flags all over the fuckin’ place, ANZAC shit. Aussie servicemen’ll get drinks half-price on Friday and Saturday night. Now d’you see the point?’

I did. Australian and American troops have never mixed well-something to do with different national images, the sociologists say. An American private saluting a colonel feels honoured, an Australian private doesn’t. He’ll look the other way if he can. That’s part of it, but there’re simpler things. Australians resent the Yanks’ equipment, diet and pay. The extra pay means extra alcohol and sex-put all those things together and you see the problem at the operational level. Two bars in close proximity, catering to similar needs on unequal terms, spelled trouble.

‘Could get lively,’ I said.

‘Could get fuckin’ murderous,’ Bean said. ‘I was in Brisbane in ‘44 when we took them on. Jesus, it was nearly as bad as the real war, I’m telling you.’

I nodded. I’d heard stories of the Brisbane street battles between Australian and American soldiers from one of my uncles. ‘I can see the problem, Lawrie. But what do you want me to do? I’m not the captain of a team of bouncers.’

Lawrie’s next Rothmans was a stub between his dark-brown fingers. ‘I want you to talk to the guy at the Macquarie,’ he said. ‘I’m told he’s a mate of yours-Ken Barraclough.’

Captain Ken Barraclough. Just hearing his name took me out of the flat straight back to Malaya where the light in the jungle played tricks so that shadows moved, and the only thing hotter and wetter than the air was your skin. Barraclough was first our instructor in camp, then our CO in the field. He drummed his motto-’Kill and Survive’-into us with his fists, boots and shouts. That first week of training was torture-inching slowly through swamps, sprinting across clearings, climbing, crawling, scrambling-with booby traps showering stinking mud and stinging stones. He woke us up at 2.00 a.m. for refinements like flamethrower attacks, and browbeat and punished us until every man in the company could hold his breath under water for two minutes and climb a forty-foot rope with a full pack.

We hated him worse than the enemy, feared him more, and so became death and survival machines like himself. His training saved my life a dozen times and won me a field commission. Then the politicians declared it was all over and we were going home. I got drunk and attempted to thank him. It was unthinkable to try it sober. He was drunk, too, we all were. He looked at me and his black moustache twitched and he said, ‘I never picked you for a poofter, Hardy.’

I’d heard nothing of him since then. His name came up when I had a drink with army mates, but no-one seemed to know what had become of him. Barraclough wasn’t the sort of man you kept in touch with.

I rolled a smoke, remembering how quickly you had to do that in Malaya if you didn’t want it to get soggy. “What makes you think me and Barraclough are mates?’