Beneath the Southern Cross (27 page)

Nellie was flirting with Ben. She always did. Nellie flirted with every man she met and particularly with Ben because she liked him the best. She meant no harm, she was just as saucy with men in the presence of her own husband. More so at times, Jack Putman enjoying his wife's vulgar good humour, safe in the knowledge of her loyalty. But Jack Putman was not present at the moment, he was halfway through a six-month stint in Darlinghurst Gaol for petty pilfering. Nellie had been furious at the time. How could he have been so thoughtless, she'd roared, just before the baby was born, and all for the sake of a bloke's wallet in a pub.

‘I tell you, Ben, when my Jack was thirty,' Nellie grinned and gave a growl of sexual innuendo, ‘oh, a bull of a man he was! A bull of a man!'

There were times when Norah found Nellie Putman repulsive. And this was one of them. She looked away, pretending to be deep in thought, so that she didn't have to watch Nellie, seated at the rickety table outside her back door, intermittently sucking on her bottle of beer whilst her child sucked on her breast, every now and then throwing her head back to laugh her raucous laugh, her big frame heaving, the baby grabbing at the nipple which had escaped it.

‘It takes a hell of a woman to bring the bull out in a man, Nell,' Benjamin deliberately flirted back, angered by his wife's disapproval. ‘And you're one hell of a woman.'

Seated beside Ben on the bench outside their own back door, Norah felt his body stiffen and she knew she'd annoyed him, but
she couldn't help it. It was disgraceful that Nellie Putman, at forty-two, should have had yet another child. The woman had two married daughters and three grown sons, and there was an eighteen-year age gap between the baby at her breast and her youngest boy. It was disgraceful that Nellie Putman openly displayed her great, sagging breast and suckled the child in the company of others. But more than anything it was disgraceful that Nellie, a middle-aged woman, fat and blowsy, should flirt with her husband. And that he should flirt back. Time and again Norah told herself the flirtation meant nothing. It was Surry Hills backyard banter. Boisterous, bawdy and utterly harmless. But she couldn't help it. The more she listened to them, the more she shrank into herself, convinced that Ben didn't love her, that he never had.

Norah had always been threatened by women's reactions to her husband. She could see the way pretty women looked at Ben. And she could see the way they looked at her. ‘What a handsome man,' she could hear them thinking, ‘why is he married to her?' Well if they'd asked, she could have told them. ‘He married me out of a sense of duty,' she could have said, ‘a sense of duty, that's all. He never loved me.' Oh, and she could just see their faces if she told them that. ‘So you trapped him,' they'd think. ‘You clever girl, you trapped the pick of the bunch.'

Well that's what Beth had believed, hadn't she? And in a way, Beth had been right. Norah had been so desperately in love with Benjamin that she had let him have his way. How else could she have held his interest? What else had she to offer? She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't even pretty. But she had never intended to become pregnant. She had been a virgin, with no idea how to guard against conception. And when she had discovered her pregnancy, she had genuinely prayed for a miscarriage, not wishing to force an unwanted marriage upon the man she loved. And in due time she had paid shockingly for such wicked prayer. The memory of her dead baby weighed perpetually upon Norah's conscience.

The banter between Benjamin and Nellie continued, but just as Norah was about to make her excuses and go inside, the back door slammed open and in walked nineteen-year-old Billy with his comrade-in-arms Mick Putman beside him, both dressed in their trademark bell-bottom trousers, bright bandanas and black slouch hats.

‘Billy!' Tim yelled, his Uncle Billy was his hero. ‘Wait till you see my new marbles,' and the boy dashed into the kitchen.

Nellie beckoned her youngest son to her. ‘Fetch us some more beer from the ice chest, Mick, there's a good lad, it's Ben's birthday.'

‘No, Nell, no, it's our shout. Fetch the beer, Billy, let's have a party.' As his young brother dived inside, Ben called after him, ‘And bring out the kitchen chairs.'

Nellie was delighted. ‘Go get your mouth organ, Mick,' she said, ‘we'll have a singalong.'

The evening turned into a boisterous success, like many a backyard party at number 22. They ate outside around the Putmans' table, sharing Nellie's rabbit-pie—she'd bought a pair from the rabbit oh's cart for sixpence that very afternoon—and Beth's mutton stew, mopping up the rich, fatty gravy with home-made damper. There was tapioca pudding to finish up with, after which they dragged the chairs back inside and sat around the table in the Kendalls' kitchen, singing along to Mick's harmonica. When they ran out of beer, Nellie got into the gin, and by midnight, she was maudlin drunk and bemoaning the fact that her Jack wasn't there.

‘Time for bed now, Timmy,' Norah insisted, ‘and I'm going myself.' Beth had retired an hour previously and Norah had only stayed up to keep an eye on her son.

‘Oh Mum,' Tim whinged as he followed Norah out of the kitchen, but it was a token protest only. He'd been fighting to stay awake for over an hour, trying desperately to hide his exhaustion. The sips of beer Billy had been surreptitiously feeding him must have amounted to two full glasses by now and he was feeling the effects.

Tim had had a wonderful night. He'd beaten his Uncle Billy twice at marbles. Unheard of! But then Billy had been pretty drunk. Tim wondered if that counted.

‘I beat Billy twice, Mum,' he said on the way upstairs, ‘and he's really good.'

‘Shh, don't wake your grandmother.'

Norah waited whilst he undressed and climbed into the top bunk and, in a matter of seconds, he was asleep.

As Beth snored lightly in the bunk below, Norah studied her son. She worried about Billy's influence over the boy. Not that
Billy Kendall was bad, but he and Mick Putman together were a wild pair of lads.

‘Billy and Mick are little more than boys themselves, Norah,' Ben had protested when she'd raised her fears with him. ‘They're not yet twenty, stands to reason they're high-spirited.'

‘But Timmy spends so much time with them.'

‘Nothing wrong with that, every boy needs a hero.'

Benjamin had known full well that Billy and Mick Putman were members of the Gipps Street Gang, but he'd said nothing about that to Norah. Anyway, half the young men in Surry Hills belonged to one or another of the local larrikin pushes, it was necessary for their reputation. They lounged around outside the headquarters of their favourite pub or billiards hall, baiting police, conducting slanging matches with passers-by and generally making nuisances of themselves. Occasionally the more criminal element in a gang waylaid a toff who should have known better than to walk the Surry Hills backstreets alone at night. A quick smack to the skull with a sock filled with sand and the toff was relieved of his wallet to wake an hour later with an aching head.

In the prearranged venues of local paddocks and alleys, neighbourhood gangs staged occasional battles, resulting in black eyes and scratches and bruises, but rarely anything more. There was cause for concern, however, when a push moved outside its own territory. When the Darlinghurst push invaded Surry Hills, or the Woolloomooloo push took on the Rocks, then it was war, and sand-filled socks were exchanged for flick-knives and daggers.

Billy and young Mick were good enough lads though. They both had legitimate jobs. Mick was employed in a blacksmith's shop and Billy had regular shift work at the Toohey's Standard Brewery in Elizabeth Street.

Ben said as much to Norah. ‘They're good lads, love, they go to work, they're not like Nellie's other two.'

Spotty and Geoff Putman were professionals. Burglars by trade. More ambitious and more proficient than their petty-thief father, they had never seen the inside of Darlinghurst Gaol, and quite possibly never would. Their downfall was more likely to come via the underworld, they had trodden on some toes in their time.

If Norah had known, as she studied her sleeping son, freckle-faced, sandy-haired, with the promise of his father's good looks,
that Timothy ‘Tiny Tot' Kendall was in fact the mascot of the Gipps Street Gang, she would have worried herself sick.

Tim had hated his nick name at first. ‘Tiny Tot's bedtime, is it?' big ‘Horse' Morgan had said loudly to Billy one day, and the other men had laughed. It was a Friday and Tim had called in to the Pig and Whistle on his way home from Crown Street School, as he did every now and then, to say hello to Billy and have a sip of his beer. A number of other young boys made a habit of hanging around the pub, relatives or fans of the push members, but they always left before it got dark. This particular time, however, Tim had stayed on too late.

Nobody had taken much notice of him, sitting quietly in the corner of the back room. He'd watched the lads smoke and drink beer and play darts, and he'd listened to their dirty stories and tales of bravado grow louder and wilder, and before he'd realised it darkness had set in. He'd be in big trouble when he got home.

Billy, suddenly recognising his nephew's dilemma, said, ‘I'll come home with you, Tim. We'll tell them we were having a kick of the footie, we won't say a word about the pub.'

‘Tiny Tot's bedtime, is it?' Horse Morgan said and the others laughed. Billy too. Good-naturedly of course, but Tim felt his face redden with rage and humiliation. He was acutely aware that he was small for his age, the smallest in his class. He'd been involved in many a skirmish to prove he wasn't the weakest, however, and they didn't tease him at school any more. Tim glowered as he left the pub.

To his horror, the nickname stuck. Not in its entirety; he was sometimes Tiny and sometimes the Tot to the members of the push, but never Tim like he used to be, and he hated it. He suffered in silence though, knowing that if he whinged he'd not only cop a terrible teasing, he'd lose the gang's respect. Even the most insulting of nicknames was better than being ignored.

Then one day, he was inadvertently rescued by none other than Ernie Morgan, Horse's nine-year-old brother.

‘G'day, Tiny Tot,' Ernie yelled above the babble of the bar.

‘What did you say?' Tim yelled back.

‘Tiny Tot, that's what I said, I said g'day Tiny Tot.' Ernie jostled Tim with his shoulder, jealous of the attention the Kendall kid received from the push. Ernie himself didn't have a nickname. It
wasn't fair, he should have had one, his big brother was one of the leaders of the Gipps Street Gang, he should have had a nickname.

‘Tiny Tot! Tiny Tot,' he chanted. Then he gave one of his goofy grins which looked like a leer, his pug-dog mouth going down at the corners instead of up.

Tim launched himself at Ernie Morgan then and there, in the middle of the Pig and Whistle, and the fight was on. The men cleared the decks to make room for the boys as they rolled amongst the sawdust and cigar butts and fag ends. They roared their approval, all barracking for Tim. Even Ernie's big brother Horse was barracking for Tim. For Tim didn't stand a chance. Ernie Morgan was a year older, and big and solid for his age. He worked alongside his brother in their father's stables and he had the Morgan build.

But Tim was acquitting himself well, heroically in fact, and the men let the fight go on. Billy and Mick weren't there to stop it, they were in the back room playing darts.

‘Go Tiny!'

‘Come on the Tot!'

‘Go Tiny Tot!'

The lads of the push roared and roared, untilfinally it became a chant. ‘Tiny Tot! Tiny Tot! Tiny Tot!'

In the back room Billy and Mick could hear the noise from the bar, a fight was on, they agreed, but they couldn't hear what was being yelled so they didn't know who was copping it. They decided to finish their game of darts before they joined the fun. Then the door opened and the barman said, ‘You better come out here, Billy, before Ernie Morgan murders that nephew of yours.'

Billy and Mick pushed their way through the crowd to discover Tim on his back on the floor of the bar, snotty-nosed, one eye bleeding, Ernie Morgan astride his chest.

‘Do you give up?' Ernie yelled, looking a little the worse for wear himself.

‘No!' Tim raised his head and his hand lashed out wildly, but without much force.

‘Tiny Tot!' a number of the lads shouted—those who would have been happy to see the fight go through to the death; others, more sensible, had stopped yelling and were clearing the way for Billy, aware it was time to break it up.

‘Do you give up?' Ernie demanded, grabbing Tim by the ears and bashing his head back into the sawdust.

‘No!'

‘He gives up, Ernie,' Billy said. ‘You've won the fight.'

Horse Morgan stepped forward and dragged his baby brother off Tim. The crowd applauded as Billy gave Tim a hand to his feet and dusted him off. Young Tiny Tot had won the respect of the bar.

That was three months ago, and since then Tim had been adopted by the Gipps Street Gang. It was tacitly understood, much to the chagrin of the other boys, that he was their mascot, and that the members of the push were permitted to call him Tiny Tot but their baby brothers were not.

Christmas and New Year passed and, two months after his father's thirtieth birthday, Timothy Kendall turned nine years old. Turning nine was a step in the right direction. Nine was much closer to ten, much older than eight. But he still wasn't any bigger. It worried him.

Billy Kendall and Mick Putman were sensitive to the boy's problem. Neither was concerned about Tim playing the wag from school, hanging around with the push, playing billiards, drinking beer. It was normal, they'd both done it themselves in their time, and they'd turned out all right. Besides, Crown Street School was the quickest introduction to the push there was. The ten-year-olds at Crown Street had gangs of their own, they were merely rehearsing for the day when they would leave behind their pencils and books. But Billy and Mick were concerned when they discovered Tim's genuine worry about his size.