Four Fires (46 page)

When it's all over, Eddie Blake thanks Bozo and pats him on the back, 'Sorry I said what I done, I should've known better. Bloke don't ask to fight Thomas unless he knows a thing or two.' He smiles his gap-toothed smile, 'Shit, that was a good punch took him out!'

Kevin Flanagan doesn't say well done to Bozo or anything like that but in the dressing room, some of the other boxers who are showering tell him he's done good. 'You in the Olympic trials?' one of them asks.

'Nah, I'm only fourteen,' Bozo tells him.

'Fourteen? Shit, hey? You don't look fourteen. You doing weights?'

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'Garbage bins,' Bozo says, not explaining further.

We go over to Mr Flanagan when Bozo's showered and changed and thank him. Bozo's got a black eye starting but is none the worse otherwise. Nancy's going to go crook on him though.

'Nice shiner comin', Bozo, souvenir to take home to Big Jack, eh. I'll give him a call, maybe we need to make a few arrangements to see a bit more of you, son. Four years don't take that long to come around.'

'Thanks, Mr Flanagan,' Bozo says, I'we learned heaps.'

Flanagan smiles, 'There's a lot more to learn before you can call yourself a champion, Bozo.

Maybe we can learn together. Australia's only ever won one Olympic boxing medal, Snowy Baker 1908.'

I'm dead-chuffed and real proud of my brother. Coming home in the tram I tell him so. 'Mate, you done good. See, you did have the speed to hit him.'

Bozo nods. 'Yeah, I was happy about that. Though when he put me on my arse, I didn't see the punch coming.'

'Wait until Kevin Flanagan phones Big Jack Donovan, maybe he'll tell the Gazette.'

'Christ, no! I'm not supposed to fight out of my age group, even spar with a seventeen-year-old.

Boxing Union could suspend me.' He turns to me, 'Don't tell no one, Mole, you hear? Not even Mike.'

'What about Nancy? She's going to see your shiner.'

I'll tell her it was an accident, you and I walking along looking at everything and I ran into a lamppost not looking.'

'Ha! She's not that stupid.'

'It'll have to do. You know how she feels about me fighting Thomas, she'll go spare.'

When we get home, Nancy's got a crisis. Her sewing machine doesn't work and there's a whole heap of stuff has to be done for Sophie who is doing piecework for a frock factory and has to have it done by Monday morning. She doesn't even notice Bozo's closed eye and asks him to take a look at the Singer. Bozo says he'll do it right after he's fed the dogs. Nancy has a lot of confidence in Bozo's ability to fix things so she hasn't panicked or anything. She's holding her granddaughter and cooing and bib-bib-bibbling and she doesn't even look up when we come in.

Bozo makes himself scarce by going out to the Diamond T and getting the bag of bones and offcuts he's brought for the dogs.

The Bitzers have been in the backyard all afternoon and when Bozo goes over to feed them they go ape. 'It's the smells/ Bozo says, 'They don't know the local smells and they thought they'd been deserted. Dogs depend on smells almost as much as their eyes to know where they are.'

Now they jump up and climb all over him, licking his face, yelping their heads off, telling him they love him, more interested in him than they are in the tucker he's putting out.

Mike, of course, sees the eye right off and so does Sarah and we know immediately there's no point in fibbing, the game's over, Sarah's as good as Nancy at not being conned by us kids. 'You tell them, Mole,' Bozo says, sighing.

So I tell them the story and Sarah says we ought to be ashamed, but you can see she doesn't mean it and Mike says we know he thinks boxing's bloody stupid, but he's glad Bozo stuck it to Thomas, who sounds a right bastard. Both of them laugh when I tell them how, after Johnny Thomas had a go at us about our names, Bozo asked how come he'd been named after a prick.

We agree that when Nancy asks, we ought to stick to the lamppost story, feeble as it is.

'It's an AC/GC,'Sarah decides.

Whenever there's general agreement over a matter between us kids, it cancels out the sin of telling a lie and it becomes an AC/GC. Sarah once told us that sometimes parents shouldn't know everything us kids know and, if it doesn't harm Nancy, then it's not a real lie. It's what she calls 'A Conspiracy for the Good of all Concerned', or AC/GC.

Mrs Rika Ray also sees the eye and soon she's back with a poultice made of leaves that look like
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cooked spinach. Who knows what it is, her remedies are endless. She's been for a walk and on the way she's picked weeds and stuff growing out of the pavements. She's walked all the way to the Fitzroy Gardens in East Melbourne and struck up a conversation with one of the gardeners, who has taken her to the

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nursery, and she's come back with an armful of herbs and cuttings. She makes Bozo lie flat on his back on the porch as she puts the poultice on his eye. Bozo's not too happy, it's drawing attention to him and he doesn't like that. It's okay in the ring, but outside he doesn't like a fuss being made. After about five minutes, Mrs Rika Ray takes off the poultice.

'We are doing same every hour, three times only, tomorrow you waking up, eye a bit red, but open and not black. Always after the fisty-cuffs you are promising to come, black eyes we are not having, cuts we are not having, bruises we are not having, one hundred per cent Indian guarantee and no arguments, full stop.' She can be pretty formidable when she carries on like that.

Little did we know at the time that Mrs Rika Ray was going to become Bozo's Number One fight fan, never missing a fight, sitting in the front row with a plastic bag of wet herbs on her lap and, whenever possible, with Bitzers One to Five at her feet watching the fight with her. In time, she and they would become almost as famous as Bozo himself.

Everything's been going perfect but we should have known it couldn't last. Now things start going wrong. The first thing is that Bozo can't fix Nancy's sewing machine. When we had to stop because of the cows crossing the road on our way down and the Singer broke loose and banged into the opposite side of the Diamond T, the wheel that holds the belt which drives the treadle must have hit the metal side of the truck and is bent. Bozo tries to straighten it, but he hasn't got the right gear and only makes it worse. There's no getting it fixed until Monday.

But that's not all. Given all the excitement of the birth and Sophie cooking all the delicious tucker for dinner and then again for tea that night, she's way behind with her piecework for the factory in Flinders Lane and, what's more, the shuttle in her sewing machine is playing up as well.

It's a hand machine and very old but Bozo gets it going again, but then an hour later it breaks down proper. It's now four o'clock on the Saturday afternoon and there's four people can use a sewing machine and both machines are history.

Even though Sophie and Mrs Rika Ray had been up all Friday 342 bryce courtenay

night with the birth of the baby and cooking and caring for everyone the next day, it would have been easy to complete the piecework. The idea was that Nancy and Mike would work all afternoon and late into the night to allow the two other machinists to have eight hours' sleep and then take over. By Sunday morning they would have finished the lot.

Sophie has got this job with Mr Stanislaw Zelinski, who came originally from Klobuck which is in the west of Poland. She reckons she is dead lucky to get the job. Mr Stan, which is what her boss is called by everyone in the frock factory, wants his workers on the premises and except for very skilled hand-finishing, won't have a bar of pieceworkers. What you can't see, you can't guarantee is his motto. Sophie, on the other hand, needs piecework if she is to stay at home and look after Sarah's baby.

Being Polish, the same as him, doesn't help Sophie neither. Flinders Lane is full of Polish immigrants who are willing to put up with the primitive conditions and come into the factories to work. What gets her the job in the end, is when she mentions her cousin, Halina Jankowski, who also came from Klobuck and it turns out Mr Stan and her were childhood sweethearts.

Halina, of course, has long since travelled the way of the six million -ghetto-cattle-train-Belsen oblivion. Mr Stan is a concentration-camp

survivor the same as Sophie, but so are a lot of the people who work for him, so that was no help whatsoever. For the sake of old-time sentiment and of past-sweetheart tragedy, Mr Stan
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makes an exception in Sophie's case and allows her to work from home. But first he tells her the rules of the establishment, which she must observe to the letter. Any cabbage must be returned to him with the completed garment. Cabbage is any material over six inches in width that may be left over when a garment is finally sewn up. In time you learn that all of Mr Stan's rules are made into slogans. If you know the slogans, you know exactly what to expect. The Australians who work for Mr Stan have this rhyme they say behind his back: Oi vey! Stan, Stan za slogan man Off cuts, please put za cabbage can Please, every stitch must be on time

You comink late! Zen your pay I fine

Next time late, you not verk again You can say cheer-o to Flinders Lane I'm sorry, my dear, zis come to pass

Not on time, you can kiss my arse!

Now Sophie can look after Sarah's baby during the day and still earn enough to help keep the wolf from the door. With Morrie's night job, her job and Sarah's scholarship money, they can pay the rent, put food on the table and have a bit over for petrol and the theatre or the symphony orchestra once a month. Morrie's also bought the secondhand Singer machine for Sophie. The work involved in turning the handle of the sewing machine is very tiring and their very next priority is to trade it in on a second-hand treadle. It's not a bad life and Morrie says they couldn't wish for more, a little food, a little culture, a little learning, freedom from danger and a family with a child to love.

Baby or no baby, the favour granted by Mr Stan doesn't extend to Sophie not meeting her quota. Like everyone else in The Lane, he runs a sweatshop on a shoestring. Sweatshop isn't a dirty word, it just means a frock factory and the frock factories run by Jewish immigrants are always short of money. There's a joke which says they are called sweatshops because the proprietors are always sweating on orders, sweating on deliveries, sweating on credit, sweating on deadlines and a host of other intangibles. Credit is everything and prompt payment for goods is a matter of survival. Work simply can't be late.

Mr Stan has been in business eight years. To start up on his own he borrowed fifty pounds from a moneylender, a Pole called Wolski from the same part of Poland as him who came to Australia before the war and made a lot of money making military uniforms, so the interest °n the money was only twenty per cent per annum on the principal with weekly repayments. There is no reduction on the principal until the interest has been paid. Banks wouldn't lend immigrants money and these were generous terms compared to many being offered the Jewish rag traders.

Mr Stan leased a factory in Fitzroy with six machines and a cutting table and two years later moved into Flinders Lane. This was not a big

jump on the prosperity ladder but more an opportunity to make small economies that would add up. The conditions of most Flinders Lane premises were appalling but now he could get his buttons and binding, sequins, cottons and fabrics, beads, zips, machine parts and the mechanics to fix them, as well as his designers and pattern-cutters and rat catchers, all on the spot. What might have taken a messenger boy all morning to procure when Mr Stan's factory was in Fitzroy, now takes a matter of minutes and the messenger boy's salary is another few shillings saved.

Then, of course, there is the comfort of having his own kind around him. Everyone knows everyone, The Lane is the beating heart of the schmatte business. The clanging of lifts with their brass grilles gives a certain assurance that business is solid. A hundred sewing machines whirring in impossibly cramped quarters is the sound of opportunity beckoning. Trucks backing into tight spaces, the drivers yelling out warnings and hurling abuse, mean orders are completed and soon to be delivered. The squeaking of the clothes racks on the cobblestones below is continuity of purpose and recalls lives spent in other places, where their fathers and their grandfathers cut and stitched and earned a livelihood pushing the same delivery racks along more worn cobbled
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lanes. The smell of burnt coffee and the hiss of the steam presses remind them that life is urgent and goes on whatever happens. Even the tired ceiling fans swirling fetid air around the factory before pumping it out through the windows into The Lane below are a living, breathing reminder that you have survived another day. Despite the persistent invasion of rats coming up from Queen's Wharf and the clogged and broken lavatories and primitive facilities, they tell themselves that they are in the business of elegance, the fashion trade, a place of rags to riches, where a ball gown can take a year to make and cost five thousand pounds. If the place they work in is freezing in winter with the pecking order on the factory floor determined by one's proximity to the oil heaters, and if in summer they must resort to working in their slips because of the oppressive heat, they are still in a free land where hardship and sacrifice can lead to security and freedom from want. All it will take is work, work, work and a little mazel, a little luck.

Flinders Lane is not only a place of work, but also a place of the heart. The Lane is food for the impoverished soul. It is the intellectual and spiritual nourishment needed by a people who have suffered and lost everything and are once again trying to gather sufficient emotional capital together to rebuild their lives. Flinders Lane is a new place in the heart where the word 'Jew' is a description, or, at the very worst, a bigoted though harmless adjective and not a death sentence.

After eight years in the business, with, God forbid, never a debt he couldn't somehow pay, the bank is only just beginning to trust Mr Stan. But then, in Flinders Lane, everything is conditional, nothing is a certainty, trust is a compliment that has to be earned over and over again. Mr Stan has to deliver his garments On time, every time!, which is another of his more important slogans.