Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [42]
A Kodachrome shows them standing on a kerosene crate grinning at the camera, Judy wearing a muslin curtain, Tony with a pair of baggy trousers held up by a too-large belt and one of Pop Watson’s felt hats flopped down to the level of his eyebrows. Other not-quite-so-old photos show Tony with his hair parted in the middle in a style worn until the Beatles put an end to the lairising look and Brylcreem and hair combs altogether.
At Bourke school there’d come a day of remembered importance when a young man named Warwick Mickless was seated next to Tony after a fair bit of whispering between teachers at the door of the room. Tony was fourteen, Warwick Mickless fifteen, a drover’s son who couldn’t read or write (or hardly), and Tony was asked to help bring him up to scratch before his next drove. Promoted from the class below, Judy was placed on the other side of Warwick from Tony. She was the cleverest girl in the school, winner of spelling bees and general knowledge quizzes—beating older kids (though there wasn’t much competition)—and at Sunday School reciting the Bible backwards, winning cardboard boomerangs and a trip to Bible Camp at Bathurst, from where she returned with some sort of bacterial bug so was sent to the Far West Children’s Health Scheme, at Manly, to recover. That was where she saw the ocean for the first time and went to the Aquarium to look at the fish.
Warwick was another sort of wonder, his long doggy face bearing burn scars from being rolled into the ashes of a campfire as a baby. They did ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ as a hush fell over the classroom, and Warwick, in a deep (halting) voice, read what seemed to be his very own part, thumbnail dipped in tar and all that. He’d never lived in a house, hardly knew what it was like to sleep with a roof over his head.
At the Brewarrina rodeo Warwick was a sensation; he picked up the ropes after the buckjumpers had thrown their riders, leaning down from a galloping pony and snatching them from the dirt. Then, with the reins looped over his arm, he leaned back and rolled a cigga.
Tony was handed the mike to read the adverts between events. You should have heard him carry on. There was a trick he had, where the pony’s galloping gait and swivel turns gave tempo to a line of patter. It was rock-and-roll, and made Tony known around the rodeos and district shows before he was seventeen.
Tony, Warwick and Judy formed a trio in those in-between years. Being seen with Warwick was to be seen with a star. Tony, his little mate, was acclaimed for verbal skills, but sometimes scorned, on the side, as befitting one with the power of words. Judy’s favourite term of approval was ‘hot dog’. ‘Hot diggety dog,’ said Tony when the three got together. On Friday nights when they went to Randall’s flicks for the double bill, Tony laughed at the clever bits and looked at Warwick to see if he got the subtler jokes. Sometimes he did; he was a fast learner. When he worked his hand down Judy’s blouse he winked at Tony to count him in on his luck.
After the flicks they went over the dialogue and Tony remembered slabs of it which they acted out, sitting on the verandah till all hours and hearing Mum’s stifled giggles from the sleepout.
Following the Intermediate year Judy went to Meriden at Strath–field. A sportsmistress took her sailing in a Gwen-class dinghy, and that was when a lifetime of simpatico communicado started each way by lettergram, news of the day, Tony and Judy in touch weekly at the very least, their two worlds, their two bubbles of life, leaning on each other till the colours ran like rainbows to the very end.
2DU Dubbo was where Tony made his start. His golden tonsilation was more in the style of an ABC bloke’s as a result of the ABC being the only network with a transmitter strong enough Out West to give him something to imitate. He’d come there via counter-jumping at Permewan Wright’s and part-time cattle and sheep auctioneering for Pitt, Son and Bender in Bourke, Bre, Warren, Coonamble and Narromine.
Sydney had Joe the Gadget Man selling people what they didn’t