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?’
‘He’s got this fuckin’ photo up in the pub. “A” Company piss-up. My mate, the bloke you helped out, recognised your ugly mug.’
I didn’t recall a photograph being taken, but I could visualise the picture-all cockeyed smiles and glassy eyes. All except Barraclough, who could drink all night and not get a hair out of place. ‘I can’t imagine Ken Barraclough running a pub,’ I said. ‘He’s not exactly the sociable type.’
‘You’re telling me. I went to see him, friendly like, and asked him to tone down the Digger stuff. He’d have tossed me out on my ear if he could have.’
I looked Bean over again. An unimpressive physical specimen to start with, he’d done further damage with tobacco and booze. The Ken Barraclough I knew could’ve thrown him from one side of Darlinghurst Road to the other. Bean saw me looking and read my mind.
‘Poor bugger’s got no fuckin’ legs,’ he said.
I agreed to talk to Barraclough, although I was already suspecting that something strange was going on. I took some money from Lawrie and got rid of him before Astrid got home with her manuscripts that we laughed at and attempted one of her laughable meals that usually ended up in the kitchen tidy. Mostly we drank wine and ate bread and cheese and eggs. Great fun. The next day I went off to perform the chores I got paid for. The alarm system, installed in the house of a very nervous bookie in Double Bay, was adequate; the solicitor, who’d tried to pay his premiums with a bad cheque, was argumentative. I threatened him with cancellation and penalty fees and he became more reasonable. Which brought me to 6.30 p.m. in Homebush. The end of a long, warm day with my private work on the south side of the harbour still to do. I rang Astrid and told her I wouldn’t be back to eat.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘I’ve got this job to do, at the Cross.’
That produced a silence. You have to understand that this was 1967 and Astrid, for all her liberation, was still a North Shore girl. Kings Cross meant only one thing to her-commercial sex.
‘Oh?’
I tried to explain something of it to her, but that only made things worse. The conversation ended coolly-upsetting when you’ve only been together a few weeks. I drove to Darlinghurst, ate something in an Italian restaurant and drank some red wine. About nine o’clock I wandered through the Cross and turned into the street that accommodated the Macquarie Hotel and the Rocky Mountain Bar. It was Friday night and the Cross was busy-girls on the street, pubs noisy and plenty of punters about. A few in uniform. Australia didn’t have a lot of hippies in those days, but what we had were mostly to be found in places like the Cross. The cops eyed the longhaired men and the bare-footed women in long skirts with more suspicion than the whores and bikies.
The pub and the bar across the street were doing business, although both bore signs of renovation still going on. The neon Stars and Stripes outside the Rocky Mountain wasn’t lit, and the Macquarie’s Digger Bar featured a backlit, giant-sized rising sun badge that was flickering faintly. Some bugs still in the electrics. I went down a set of steps under the badge into a space that smelled of beer and tobacco. But the smells were fresh, warring with the odours of new carpet and fresh paint.
The place was a cross between an army mess and a conventional Australian pub. There was a fair bit of military insignia scattered around- crossed. 303s mounted over the bar, a big reproduction of Dyson’s portrait of Simpson and his donkey, regimental flags. Lots of photographs. There was a light fug in the bar and I had to squint to make out the details of the photo on the wall beside the Gents. The faces were all familiar-WO Ron Herbert, Frank Harper, Alby Abbott, the RSM. Ken Barraclough was in the middle of the group, scowling, glass in hand, looking as if he wished he were on parade. I was on his left, lighting a cigarette. I rolled one now as I gazed at a piece of my own history.
A flame flared inches from my face. ‘Light, Hardy?’
I looked down. Barraclough had run his wheelchair up silently, the way he used to move in the jungle. He held up the long flame of a gas lighter. I dipped the cigarette down and puffed.
‘Thanks, Ken.’
A click and the lighter disappeared. ‘Tell me I’m looking well and I’ll run this thing over your foot. It’s heavy. It’ll hurt.’
I said nothing. In fact, he didn’t look good. He was pale and bloated in the face and flesh had built up on his torso. There was grey in his hair and moustache, and his eyes had sunk into puffy pouches. He wore an army shirt with no badges of rank. I couldn’t help it; my eyes dropped to where his legs should have been. There was nothing. He’d been lopped off somewhere around mid-thigh.
‘What happened, Ken?’ I said.
He let out a short, barking sound that could have been a laugh, the way the twist of his mouth could have been a smile. ‘That’d be right,’ he said. ‘Direct. No bullshit, eh, Hardy?’
‘That’s right.’
A man wearing an army shirt and trousers appeared with two schooners, handed one to Barraclough and one to me and disappeared into the crowd that was building up. Barraclough sank about half the schooner in a long gulp. ‘Vietnam,’ he said. ‘Chance of a lifetime.’
I drank some of the beer. ‘Mine?’
‘Yeah. American mine.’
And that was the heart of the problem, right there. Barraclough told me that he’d been leading a patrol which had entered an area the Americans had mined without properly informing the Australian command. ‘Bastards, lousy soldiers, gutless wonders. Could’ve done with you there, Hardy. But you’d had enough, right?’
‘Right,’ I said. I was leaning back against the wall, almost pinned there by the wheelchair. Barraclough’s eyes glittered in their deep, soft sockets and his hands twitched nervously. Those hands, which I’d seen moving faster than the eye could follow-loading, firing, signalling-now seemed to have a neurotic, uncoordinated life of their own. He clenched his glass, emptied it. Another appeared.
‘So what brings you here?’ Barraclough said. ‘Now that you’re a prosperous civilian.’
‘Lawrie Bean asked me to have a word with you.’
‘That little shit! Why would you be having anything to do with him?’
‘I’m an insurance investigator these days, Ken. But I also do a bit of this and that to make ends meet. I’m working for Bean, sort of.’
The wheelchair spun away. ‘Then you can get the fuck out! Eddie!’
I took two steps towards the retreating wheelchair before the man who’d been supplying Barraclough with beer stopped me. He grabbed my shoulder and his grip told me everything I needed ‘to know about him. He was strong, balanced and ready for action. A professional. He was also big and on his own turf. I knew how to get out of a grip like that and I did it. I finished my beer and tossed the schooner to him. The gesture took him by surprise. He caught the glass and I feinted the punch that would’ve flattened him.
I said, ‘Thanks for the drink, Ken,’ stepped around Eddie and left the bar.
Driving back to North Sydney, I discovered that I was in an evil mood. Barraclough had been an artist in his way, and what had happened to him was wrong. He should have survived intact, or gone out clean, instead of being so badly damaged in mind and body. I was convinced of the mind damage. The Digger Bar and the pseudo-uniforms were grotesque, a sick joke.
I took it out on Astrid. I was morose and drank too much that night and was unresponsive in bed. I tried to make amends in the morning, but only partly succeeded. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a little about it, but she didn’t understand. I didn’t understand it myself, but somehow I didn’t want to see Barraclough running a bloodhouse masquerading as an army mess. It seemed a denial of everything he’d done in the past out of sense of duty and commitment. I rang Bean and told him I’d need a little time.
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Yes. He’s a sick man.’
‘Thanks very much, Dr Casey. Did you make him see sense?’
‘We didn’t get that far. Look, it’s complicated. If you want me to work on it, I will. But it’s not just a matter of persuading Barraclough to take off the slouch hat.’
‘Shit. The Yanks’re due any day. All it’ll take is for a couple of drunk GIs to go across the road and talk to those fuckin’ ANZAC types Barraclough’s got over there, and it’ll be on! The cops’ll close us both down. Who wins then?’
‘Your thinking’s too simple, Lawrie. He blames the US for what happened to him. He wants a stoush, he needs it.’
Bean swore a few times and then asked me what I had in mind. I told him I needed to find out some more about Barraclough and how he’d got into the state he was in. That got me a silence on the line.
‘Lawrie?’
‘Yeah? I didn’t think I was hiring a fuckin’ trick cyclist.’
‘You were calling me Ben Casey a minute ago. How come you can’t back off on this “all the way with LBJ” shit?’
‘There’s money in it.’
‘Come on. When the fleet’s in everyone makes money. You don’t need the neon stars ‘n’ stripes to make a quid.’
Another silence, then Bean said, ‘I’ve got an American backer. He’s keen on the whole thing.’
‘Without him you’re in trouble?’
‘I’m down the dunny.’
‘Well then, you can see how complicated it is, too. Give me a few days, Lawrie.’
Bean agreed and I got busy. I hadn’t kept up a lot of army contacts, didn’t go to regimental dinners and such, but I knew a few people who knew a few more. After a morning spent mostly on the telephone, I finally got through to the doctor who’d treated Barraclough and sat on the committee that handled his discharge and disability settlement. He was Dr Stuart Henry, now a Reserves major.
‘Very sad case, Mr Hardy,’ the doctor said. ‘A brilliant officer, totally dedicated, who made two bad mistakes.’
‘What d’you mean, doctor?’ I asked.
‘He ignored or refused to believe an advice from US Command that a certain area was mined. That was mistake number one. It was an area he needed to pass through to accomplish his mission, no doubt about that. He could have got a key to the mine placement, but he didn’t. Mistake two. Give him credit, he was up front when they went in. And he paid the penalty.’
I had to frame the next query carefully. There’s nothing the army likes less than to have its judgments questioned. ‘Doctor, you know Barraclough insists that he wasn’t advised of the mines.’
‘Absurd,’ Henry snapped. ‘The Americans’ paperwork was immaculate.’
I could imagine the scene: Barraclough with mud on his boots and in his hair, sweat patches under his arms, anxious to take some position that would afford relief to his men and others. A paper blizzard blowing into his tent and the muddy boots stamping on it.
‘What would you say was his mental condition when he was discharged, doctor?’
Henry sighed. ‘Mr Hardy, I’m only talking to you because people I trust tell me you’re discreet.’
“That’s right,’ I said.
Another sigh. ‘He was a grenade with the pin out-paranoid, depressive, deluded.’
‘Did he get a big payout-compensation, anything like that?’
A snort of derision. ‘No. A standard wounded-in-action allowance, calculated according to rank and years of service.’
I knew what that meant-medical bills taken care of for life, but life still to be lived on a tight budget as the cost of living went up. “Thank you, doctor,’ I said. ‘One last question-did Captain Barraclough come from a wealthy background?’
‘I thought you knew him.’
‘I did, but as a soldier. The soldier takes over the man. I didn’t know anything about him personally.’
‘Captain Barraclough’s father was a soldier settler who went broke and shot himself after his wife left him. He was raised in orphanages and educated in reform schools. He’s a self-made man, Mr Hardy.’
Which left the question-where had Barraclough got the money to operate the pub? I did some ringing around about that, too, but got no answers. As a next step, I arranged to meet Grant Evans, my main police contact, for a drink that evening. As soon as I’d put the phone down I realised that this meant another call to Astrid to explain another late arrival home. It didn’t go over too well.
I met Grant in the Metropolitan and told him the story. We were drinking middies of old and smoking my Drum.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Grant said.
‘Find out if there’s someone dirty behind Barraclough. If there is, you can step in and prevent the bloodbath that’s bound to happen.’
Grant looked at me oddly. We’d known each other since Police Boys’ Club days in Maroubra. I’d been best man at his wedding. We’d been in Malaya, too, although not in the same Company. He knew Barraclough only by reputation, not from personal experience. Still, what I was proposing sounded like a low blow to an old comrade.
‘I don’t know, Cliff. What if he’s on the up and up? What if he borrowed legitimate money to get the pub? You’d be shoving him over the edge.’
‘The man’s off his head. If he goes on with this thing there’s bound to be trouble. He could end up on a manslaughter charge or something like that. Closing the pub’d be the least of his worries.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ Evans said.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Grant. Just poke around a bit, will you?’
He said he would and we had a few more beers. Astrid’s reception, when I got back to North Sydney, somewhere around 9.30, amorous and contrite, was icy.
For the next few days I did the routine things, got home in time for dinner and tried to mend the domestic fences. I was half-successful. Astrid accused me of being distracted and wanted to know what was going on. I tried to explain the ins and outs of the Barraclough case, but she didn’t understand.
‘This is 1967,’ she said, ‘not the 1940s. People are different. They’ve been to school longer. Those soldiers aren’t going to take bayonets to each other.’
‘They will,’ I said, ‘if the conditions are right. If they get fuelled up enough and egged on in the right way.’
‘Well, you’ve done the right thing. You’ve alerted the police. They’ll be on the lookout.’
‘I haven’t alerted the police, love. I’ve just had a private talk with Grant’
‘Won’t he pass it on?’
‘Not without talking to me first.’
Astrid smoked Benson amp; Hedges-filters in the gold pack. She lit one now and blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘God,’ she said, ‘it’s like a secret society. You ex-army types. You’re no better than my father.’
‘Was he ex-army? You’ve never told me.’
‘No. He went to Lodge, all tricked out in a dinner suit and carrying a little bag. My mother hated it. After he died, they came around and took the bag away. You’re like savages, you men, with your clubs and games.’
Grant phoned me the next day. ‘First batch of GIs’re due in today.’
‘Great. I took a walk past the pub and the club this morning. It’s all systems go, on both sides. Beer’s half-price at the Digger Bar for Australian servicemen and Lawrie Bean’s advertising a shot and a beer at prices you wouldn’t believe. For Yanks, that is. Did you find anything out about Barraclough?
‘Not much. He’s the licensee. The pub’s not tied to a brewery. It’s owned by a company named Australian Holdings which is one of a group of subsidiaries of something called the Pacific Investments Corporation.’
‘Jesus, is that legal?’
‘They tell me it’s the business structure of the future.’
‘Who tells you that-the fraud squad?’
‘We’ve got nothing to act on, Cliff. The boys on the beat can keep an eye out, but they’re going to have their hands pretty full anyway. It’s worrying.’
Grant Evans was a busy man with a weight problem, a family he loved and ambitions which were being frustrated. He was dead straight and found a lot to worry him inside the New South Wales police force. I could hear real concern in his voice now and I pressed him to tell me what else he knew. He admitted that he’d gone into the Digger Bar himself the night before. He’d left his cop suit and manner in the office-he was an ex-serviceman and a drinker and he knew how to conduct himself. What he’d overheard had alarmed him.
‘Barraclough’s crazy,’ he said. ‘He wants to see American and Australian soldiers fighting. He says the Americans are the real enemy in Vietnam. Reckons all they’ve got is equipment, no brains, no plans and no guts.’
‘What about the military police? Can’t our people and the Yanks bung on a bit of protection?’
Evans sighed. ‘I sniffed around on that. There’s a problem. Sydney got to be the Rest and Recreation base after a fair bit of negotiating. Brisbane was well in the running, being closer, but the line was that there could be some racial problems up there with the black GIs. We’re more cosmopolitan and sophisticated, see?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and it wouldn’t look good to start staking out the bars with MPs.’
‘Right. Not on the first night. We’ll have to wait and see how it shapes up, Cliff.’
I was edgy and hard to get along with at home that night. Astrid pretended not to notice and I pretended not to notice that she was pretending.
In the morning, I called in at the Rocky Mountain Bar and saw the signs of what I feared- broken glass on the pavement, some damage to the neon sign. Two big potted palms, which had stood outside, had been snapped off. Soil from the pots had been spilled over the lobby carpet. I went in and found Lawrie Bean supervising a clean-up. Inside, there didn’t seem to be much damage, except to Bean. His tight grey waves were ruffled, his eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as if he needed lots of sleep.
He lit a Rothmans and flicked the match at me. ‘Thanks, Hardy. You did a great job. We had visitors last night, tanked to the gills.’
‘How many?’
‘Enough. There was a couple of big black Marine sergeants here, as it happened. They managed to keep a bit of order. But it’s going to get worse. People are going to get hurt.’
‘What do your backers say?’
Bean would’ve spat if he hadn’t been standing on his new carpet. ‘They tell me to handle it. They’re insured to the hilt, so what the fuck? I tell them we’ll get closed down and they say talk to the right people. They don’t understand how things work in Sydney. Hey, where’re you going?’
‘To see Barraclough.’ I went up the steps fast and almost knocked over a man who was standing at the top, looking down into the gloom and shaking his head.
He steadied himself against the wall and I turned towards him to apologise.
‘Cliff Hardy,’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
It was Rhys Thomas, a journalist I knew slightly and didn’t want to know any better. He worked for one of the tabloids and had tried to do a feature on me before I convinced him otherwise.
‘Having an early morning drink,’ I said. ‘How about you?’
‘Just came down to take a look at something we’re not allowed to write about. Didn’t know there was an insurance angle, but.’
‘There isn’t,’ I said. ‘What d’you mean?’
Thomas was a pasty-faced, nocturnal snoop. To even see him in daylight was rare. To see him working was an event. He bared his yellow teeth in an ingratiating smile. ‘Tit for tat?’
‘No. You said “we’re” not allowed to write about something. That means other people know what you know. I’ll ask them.’
He offered me a Senior Service, which was about the only tailor-made cigarette I found hard to resist. I needed a smoke and I took it. I lit it myself, though.
‘Look, Hardy,’ Thomas said, ‘there was a stoush here last night. I saw the tail end of it. Pretty bad. Filed a piece and it got spiked. You know why?’
I puffed smoke and shook my head.
‘There’s no trouble for GIs in our fair city. That’s official. How does that sit with you?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not a crusader, Rhys. Neither are you, last I heard.’
‘A couple of our boys got hurt pretty badly here. Hospital cases. Whisked away and nothing’s being said. What about that?’
It got to me-a bunch of politicians and city plutocrats sitting down and declaring what was what while dopey young soldiers jabbed broken glasses at each other. I grabbed Rhys by the arm and dragged him across the street. ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘There’s a story here all right. You just might be the man to tell it, if that’s the way it works out.’
I could feel fear and resistance in Thomas’ body as I hauled him over to the Macquarie. ‘Hardy,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure…’
‘Nothing’s sure, Rhys,’ I said, ‘except that you’re going to get a very thick ear unless you come with me.’
Barraclough was holding court in the Digger Bar. He had a full schooner in his fist and an empty one at his elbow. A couple of his semi-uniformed cronies were gathered round-bristling moustaches, tattooed forearms, beer-glazed eyes.
‘Well, well,’ Barraclough crowed, ‘it’s Lieutenant Hardy who got out when the getting out was good. Top of the morning, Cliff.’
He raised the full schooner. I got close enough to knock it out of his hand. The beer sloshed and spilled over Eddie who was in close attendance. Eddie growled and got to his feet.
‘Sit down, Eddie,’ Barraclough slurred. ‘Man’s some kind of cop. Probably got a gun. Got a gun, Hardy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t need a gun for Eddie or anyone else here. I don’t understand you, Ken. Why’re all these arse-lickers around? And where was Eddie last night? I hear the Marines put a couple of Australians in St Vincent’s.’
‘There’ll be other nights,’ Barraclough said.
I was so incensed by the stupidity of it all that I shoved one of the courtiers aside and pushed my face close up to Barraclough’s red, sweaty kisser. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Ken. You were a great officer, the best. You made a mistake and paid hard for it. Now you want to fight, a little GI versus Aussie war right here in the Cross. Fuck you! What gives you the right to put blokes in hospital with broken jaws and carved-up faces?’
‘I didn’t make any mistakes.’
‘The brass say you did. Prove that you didn’t.’
Barraclough roared something incoherent and slammed his fists down on his fat stumps.
‘Foaming at the mouth doesn’t prove a thing,’ I said.
Eddie and a couple of the other heavies looked restless. They were all battling hangovers and could turn mean at any moment. Rhys Thomas had backed into the shadows, but he was soaking up every word. Barraclough was the key to it all. The trick was to force something conciliatory, something reasonable out of him.
‘What about it, Ken?’ I taunted him. ‘Want to Indian wrestle? You used to be good at that. I saw you break a guy’s arm once in Singapore. The bone came through the skin. Remember? Want to arm wrestle to prove you were right? Prove the Yanks never told you the fucking mines were there? Prove you didn’t blow your fucking legs off yourself?’
There was silence in the room. The night’s smoke and beer fumes hung in the air like cobwebs. Sweat poured from Barraclough’s face as he fought to control his anger. He looked around at the men lolling in chairs, slumped over tables and his lip curled. He sucked in a deep breath and his eyes came to focus on me. They bored in, tested me, the way he used to do back when he was about to issue orders about how to kill and survive. Suddenly, he was sober and deadly again.
‘No, Cliff,’ he said softly. ‘I’m out of condition and you’re still in shape. But I’ll tell you what. You get that little prick Bean to find a Yank who can fight and we’ll put an Aussie up against him. Unarmed combat with no holds barred.’
‘What’s the point?’ I said.
‘That’ll settle it. Win, lose or draw, I won’t look for trouble with the Yanks. We’ll fraternise.’
‘No provocation?’ I said. ‘No Yankees Go Home and half-price beer for Australians?’
‘Right,’ Barraclough said.
It seemed like a possible solution to a mess that was bound to grow messier otherwise. I couldn’t see Bean having any objection. Bound to be a dirty fight, but one unarmed brawl was better than a hundred with broken bottles.
‘I’ll put it to Bean,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to fight for you?’
Barraclough signalled for a drink. A schooner arrived and he took a small sip and wiped his moustache, very much the mess officer. You are, Cliff. Who else?’
Rhys Thomas was practically incoherent with delight.
‘What a story,’ he babbled. ‘What a story.’
I’d done the deal with Bean. The fight was set for two nights away. My opponent was going to be one of the black Marine sergeants. Thomas had all the details. I bought him a drink in a pub in Victoria Street and gave him the bad news.
‘No story, Rhys,’ I said, ‘not yet awhile.’
‘Yeah, yeah. When the fight’s over. I appreciate that. But even with the hush-hush on, they can’t suppress this.’
‘You’re missing the point. I’m suppressing it. I just took you along for recording purposes. I don’t want anything written about this.’
‘Hardy!’
‘Maybe one day.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘It has to be. If you don’t agree, I’ll make sure you don’t get to see the fight.’
‘I suppose you could do that, but how’re you going to stop me writing about it?’
I lowered my glass and looked at him.
‘Jesus, Hardy. You can be an evil-looking bastard when you try.’
‘I’m going to have to be more than evil-looking to get out of this in one piece.’
‘Come on. It’ll be a set-up, won’t it?’
‘You don’t know Barraclough. He’ll make sure it’s not.’
I went through the motions for the rest of the day and then went back over the bridge. Things weren’t any better on the home front. Astrid tried. She asked me how the Barraclough matter was going and I wasn’t forthcoming. What could I do? Tell her I was going mano e mono against some Harlem streetfighter for the sake of something I wasn’t even clear about myself?
On the day of the fight, Grant Evans called to tell me how quiet it had been the night before. ‘False alarm, eh, Cliff?’
I grunted.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Sorry, Grant, I’ve got a few things on.’
He hung up, offended. Terrific. Just the way to go into a fight, with your woman cold and resentful and your best mate pissed off. I got through the day somehow. Astrid had told me that she wouldn’t be in until nine. I said we could watch Peter Gunn together at 10.30. She wasn’t amused.
I turned up at the Macquarie at 9.00 p.m. wearing jeans, tennis shoes and an old army shirt. I leaned against a car outside and waited until Barraclough came to me. A couple of his boys had lifted the wheelchair up to street level and were looking a bit distressed. Barraclough was drunk.
‘Where?’ I said.
‘Out the back. That little prick of a journalist reckons you said he could watch. That right?’
‘Yeah. I hope you haven’t sold tickets.’
Barraclough chuckled. ‘Just a few friends, Hardy. Just a few friends.’
The wheelchair had an electric motor. He drove it along a narrow lane beside the pub and through a gate into a small yard, floodlit from the wooden stairs that led down from the back of the hotel. It looked as if Barraclough’s backers planned some improvements out here. The cement had been taken up and the yard was about to be bricked. The bricks, nice ones, salvaged from some demolished building, were in stacks around the edge. The space, about the size of two boxing rings, was covered with a couple of inches of sand. Lawrie Bean was there, along with three men in US military uniform, three Australian soldiers and Rhys Thomas. A woman sat on the bricks, smoking. Along with Barraclough, me and Eddie, that made twelve. The woman came across to stand beside Barraclough’s wheelchair. She was a leggy blonde with a miniskirt, sequined top and a face hard enough to knock the mortar off the old bricks.
A man stepped from the shadows near the steps. Number thirteen. He wore fatigue pants, a singlet and basketball boots. He was about six-foot-two, fourteen stone and black. Except for his teeth. They were very white when he smiled, which he did now.
‘Hi, honky,’ he said. ‘I understand you don’t like niggers.’
I shot a told-you-so look at Thomas but I didn’t bother to reply. I took off my watch, removed the money from my pockets and put the lot on the bricks, never taking my eyes off the Marine. He spat on his hands and dropped into a crouch.
‘Sergeant Lester Dobbs,’ he said. “Whose ass do I have the pleasure of whipping?’
‘My name’s Hardy,’ I said, ‘and you talk too bloody much.’
He scooped up a handful of sand and whipped it at me, but I was ready for that and went in under it with my eyes slitted. I kicked for his groin; he shuffled fast and took it on the thigh. My foot bounced off rock-hard muscle. He came at me, jabbing out a left, right cocked, balanced. I moved my head enough to avoid the jab and hit him on the nose with a quick one of my own. Too light, rusty, not enough snap. He got me with the right below my left eye and I went down. I saw his huge blue and white basketball boot coming for my ribs and twisted away; he missed, lost balance momentarily and I swept his feet from under him with a scythe kick. Even falling, he was fighting; he came down hard on top of me and we grappled in the sand, kicking and clawing until I got away, courtesy of one good elbow to his ear.
We were up again, circling. I could feel blood on my face and there was a roaring in my ears. He was sweating and dirty but unmarked, smiling. I didn’t even see the roundhouse right that caught me in exactly the same place as the first one and closed my eye. I claimed him and brought my knee up which hurt him a bit but not enough to stop him butting me. I felt my nose break, not for the first time, and pain spread through my skull. I might have landed a few more times, I don’t remember. All that stays with me is the hiss and stink of his boozy breath as he hit me, left and right, head and body. The pain was everywhere, mounting to a crescendo. I felt a tooth collapse, then my mouth was full of sand and the pain stopped.
I heard Dobbs say, ‘Guy can fight.’ Then I was lifted up and propped against the bricks. Something damp was passed across my face and a glass was lifted to my mouth. I sucked in beer, choked and sprayed it out with blood and the broken tooth.
‘Jesus, Hardy.’
I recognised Rhys Thomas’ voice but I couldn’t see him. My left eye was closed and the other had sand in it. I lifted my hand to rub the good eye and felt the blood dripping from my knuckles. I smiled. I thought, Must’ve landed one punch at least.
‘He’s laughing,’ Thomas said.
Barraclough sounded almost sober. ‘Hardy’s got some fuckin’ funny ideas, but he’s not a squib.’
I said, ‘I don’t hate niggers.’
Dobbs’ ripe breath was close to my face again. ‘Say what?’
I had just enough strength to raise my hand and wiggle the fingers. ‘Joe Louis was the greatest fighter and Louis Armstrong’s the greatest horn player ever.’
‘An’ the best singer?’ Dobbs said.
‘Ella Fitzgerald,’ I said.
‘You’re all right, man. Who’s going to take this guy home?’
I don’t know how it happened, but the next thing I knew I was sitting in the back seat of my Falcon. My shirt was ripped but I could feel my watch and money in the pocket. Dobbs was driving and the blonde in the miniskirt was sitting next to me soaking up my blood with tissues. We crossed the bridge.
‘Walker Street,’ she said. ‘Turn here, sweetie.’ She had a nice, soft, breathy Sydney voice.
Then we were on the landing outside the flat and the woman was ringing the bell and Dobbs was holding me up.
Astrid opened the door. She was wearing one of her black silk nighties and looked adorable.
Her eyes went wide at the sight of the Negro, the battered bloody ruin and the whore.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Is it always going to be like this?’