The Beat (2 page)

“There you are, you cunt.” The young man clung to the damp wall of the urinal and said nothing. Figures moved in the shadows. Kevin could hear them breathing, watching. He stood stock still. Vague shapes began to loom up around him, timid and inquiring, like jungle apes investigating a strange object suddenly in their midst.

“Shit, how many of you bastards are there?” And he lashed out towards the amorphous shapes. There was a thud. He had made contact. A figure stumbled back in the darkness. Then new figures moved in. He felt hands reach out to touch him. It was eerie, like the blind identifying an object by touch alone. They didn’t seem to fear him at all. He was an alien and must be known. Then he felt the figures drawing back. No word had been spoken. He waited. There was a sharp crack behind him. He swung around. A solid figure blocked the door.

“You fucking poofter!” he screamed. Another quick movement behind him and still he couldn’t see properly. A cigarette lighter flashed its fire for a moment. It was held high. For a second faces were illuminated around him, then darkness. In the flash of light it was like a witches’ coven. Faces illuminated against dank walls … male heads, eyes staring, like ancient cave paintings. Then darkness again. The unity was primeval. Stillness, blackness; he waited. Suddenly the silence was broken by the crack of an arm across his face. It was a crashing blow, throwing his head sideways. He caught the dark smell of leather. He lurched backwards. Nothing. He waited. He heard an intake of breath and something crashed down on his skull. He reeled forward to meet a knee butting into his groin. There were sounds of movement everywhere. He lost his nerve. He screamed. A blow smashed into the side of his face and another into his groin. He was sinking fast. He was on his knees, his arms cradling his head. The warm smell of semen greeted him from the ground. A boot slammed into his back. He jerked out involun-tarily. A boot slammed into his groin and he doubled forward again, his hands flung out above his head. Sounds stopped around him. He tried to move, preparing in the dark for the next blow. If he could only get to the protection of one of the corners. He dragged his way along the floor. His hand reached up the dampness of a wall. He felt someone’s leg still and quiet. He let go and waited. The blow came. His head crashed to the cement. The smell of deodorant balls and urine; the taste of blood in his mouth.

His mate was getting bored in the car. He’d heard the poof scream once or twice. Kevin must be doing a good job this time. He was still dying for a piss. What the fuck was Kevin up to? He couldn’t hold on any longer. Swinging open the car door, he hauled himself out to piss in the gutter. He was still pretty drunk because he pissed uphill. It ran back on his boots. He swung round to face downhill, spraying the side of the car as he did so. He was still fumbling with his zip when he saw the first figure coming out of the bog. He expected it to be Kevin. It wasn’t. Something was wrong. Then out comes another figure and another. One could have been the poof Kevin chased in; they all looked alike in the dark. Groping for the open door, he bundled back into the car and pushed down the locks, watching. If something was wrong he wasn’t going to be in on it. Kevin would be alright — just a bunch of poofs. Jeez, but how many of them had there been? All these dark shapes just pissing off into the trees. A figure got into one of the cars parked ahead. He heard a motor bike starting up and he dropped down onto the seat of the car. Another car started up and pulled away. He hid from the lights. He didn’t want to be part of it. It was Kevin’s idea. The keys were still in the ignition. Carefully he slid over to the driver’s seat. He would just idle the car down to the end of the street in the darkness and then get the hell out of it. But what if the bastards heard him? Better stay there. He cringed back onto the floor and waited. Minutes passed — perhaps five, he couldn’t tell. Kevin would be alright. He could look after himself. He’d scared all the poofs out like rabbits bolting the warren. But he was sure taking his time. He sat up a little and peered round. No one about. He started the car up and cruised a few yards closer to the bog. The engine running, he gave a few blasts on the horn and waited. What the fuck? Kevin was trying to give him the creeps. What could a bunch of poofs do? Another blast on the horn. Nothing. He switched off the engine and got out of the car. He stood there on the road, then headed for the bog. Sometimes Kevin could give you the shits when he put the wind up you like this. No point in waiting any longer. He strode over. Get Kevin at his own game. He crunched over the gravel, then growled in an assumed voice: “Police here, stay where you are.” He sprang through the door.

“Got you, you bastard,” he yelled. Shit, it was so dark, he couldn’t see a thing. It was quiet too. He edged carefully forward. There was no one there. His foot hit something. He bent down and felt it. It was a fucking corpse.

When the alarm went off, Arthur stayed put. He wasn’t going to get out of bed again, ever. Life outside had become quite meaningless and nightmarish. In bed it was warm, safe and comfortable. He remained deep under the blankets, only the top of his bald head and an aged eye peeping out. At sixty-eight he was too old. The arthritic bend of his back and the permanent droop of his shoulders gave him a foetal look even in everyday life. In bed it was emphasised. An embryo curled up inside the womb putting off the moment of birth. The alarm had stopped ringing by now. He could hear clattering through in the rest of the house. It had little to do with him. His room was his fortress. His eye roamed cautiously around the room, then flickered shut again. The room, the mirror, his own beady eye looking back: he wanted to block it all out. Dignity; somewhere along the line he had lost his dignity. The beautiful head of his youth had been transformed into this wizened parrot-like skull. The crowning glory of hair now sat on a styberfoam wigstand by the bed. Life, age; it could make you cry. Arthur put his head back under the covers to escape from it all. It had happened so quickly without him noticing. One day he had woken up an old man. He tried to doze a little. Perhaps he did, he couldn’t tell. Life had changed so much it played tricks on him. He felt like Rip Van Winkle. Fifty years on and he was back living with Frieda in his mother’s house. Those fifty years of almost escaping and never quite making it. Always being brought back to the family in some form. Now Frieda was all the family he had left and still they were together. He had never liked his sister. After sixty years it was a little late to tell her. He suspected she knew. They were now a habit, little more. It wasn’t worth the upset, the violent uprooting, to try to escape now. Escape to what? All those years of cringing from violence and last night the boy had died before his eyes. Such a different boy than Arthur had been in his youth, but a young life never-theless. Now the boy would never wake up to find he was sixty-eight and life had passed by in the night, as it had for Arthur.

“You know what they used to call me?” he said to himself. “Golden Boy, they called me Golden Boy.” It still amused him. All those years ago. They were all gone now. Only Arthur, a self-parody, remained. Golden Boy! He remembered Golden Boy sitting in a restaurant being dined by candle light, his Gary Cooper lookalike sitting opposite. He remembered the carafe of wine, the linen napkins, the discreet smiles, the starched white cuff of his shirt showing below the sleeve of his navy blue suit, as he carefully placed his knife and fork to reach for his wine glass. The care he had taken with himself that night. Boys dressed to be taken out in his day. Suit, white shirt, tie, hat. He never as much as left the house without his hat. That night he had scrubbed himself for hours, occupying the boarding-house’s sole bathroom to the distress of others until he felt he was perfect. His mind roamed back to the dinner. Nine o’clock, no more wine. Two men leaving the restaurant. Walking through the streets, overcoats over their arms. The rap of feet on the pavement past the lights of the Bourke Street theatres. A few women, who shouldn’t have been, loitered on the footpath at the top end of Bourke Street. Going home alone on the tram. The doors opening and closing with each stop. More romance in your head than possible in your life. Things were so difficult, yet the memories so pleasant. Boasting at the coffee house to the other boys. Long rows of listening faces at “Tates”. Sly grog in their satchels. Golden Boy the toast all over again. Always a new lover; this one with a car, that one with friends in the country. A politician, a doctor; Golden Boy was wooed, dined, sent flowers. Feeling like Greta Garbo triumphant alone in his room. The boarding-house breathing his secret all around him. The whistle of a lover waiting in the street. What had happened to that boy? How had he become this old man, balding, hiding under the counterpane in fear of the world? The boy had been all set for the world. He could have conquered it. Now he was a fugitive hiding from his crime beneath pink candlewick. And when the police came to take him away, Frieda would stand on the footpath wearing her check apron and furry slippers, her head cocked on one side. She would become one of the condemning neighbours. No love lost in their house, their mother’s house, as it would forever be known. Frieda like her mother, only now years older. One husband and two children dead and still Frieda nodded and twitched on. He hated her. Every time he looked at her he was reminded of his own age. Why had death been so cruel as to spare both of them so long? If only she would die, he could sell their mother’s house and be free. Frieda would outlive him too. It was Frieda’s way. The house would one day be hers alone and she would stay in it, letting it crumble around her to deprive other genera-tions. Arthur would stay in bed. His mind was resolved. He didn’t want to face whistling kettles and cold toast in the kitchen. He would stay where he was and think it out. He turned over in bed and faced the wall. What had happened the night before? Where had he gone so wrong? Had he really been part of it? Arthur, who had left the army ignominiously because all he could do was work in the officers’ mess and dance the girl’s part at the parties in the hut. Arthur the pansy. They had made his life hell on the parade ground. He had collapsed, been discharged and back in Melbourne doing the beats all within a year. Arthur, who couldn’t even look at blood without feeling faint — had he been part and parcel to the beating down of that young thug in the park? He couldn’t comprehend it. He had never had a violent bone in his body. At least Ronnie was not alive to know. It was after the war he had first met Ronnie. He had seen him for the last time — when? About ten years ago. Arthur’s mother had died. Ronnie had sent flowers and a letter. The letter had said, “Now you can come and live with me.” Poor Ronnie had never given up. Time after time if Arthur’s life was in a mess, he would turn up and make the same offer:

“Come and stay with me Arthur. It won’t matter what others say — at least it won’t matter to me. ” Arthur had known too late that he loved Ronnie. It had taken a drunken driver and a hit-and-run, to prove that Ronnie had needed him too. Just an old man too slow crossing the road. They didn’t even call it manslaughter. All his life Arthur had been alone. Only on Ronnie’s death had he known that he missed out on something he had always wanted. Some drunken driver, like the thug in the park. Perhaps that was it, perhaps it had been revenge that had made Arthur strike back? All those years Ronnie had loved Arthur, long after he had ceased to be Golden Boy. Arthur must have been thirty when they met. Ronnie was the first lover he’d had of his own age. Always he had gone for older men. It was part of life in the Depression. Only an older man could afford to take you out. Young boys just went out together as a group of queens, not on what they later called dating. “Dating” and “cocksucker”: the only terms the Yanks had left with them. Such a violent death for a young boy. Arthur remembered a fight one night at the Hotel Australia. It had been in the downstairs bar. It was pretty infamous to be seen there; you didn’t go if you had a reputation to lose. Then one night rumour had it the Duke of Edinburgh had walked in. The old Stud Pit had buzzed for weeks after that. But Arthur remembered the night there had been a fight there. A couple of army guys had tried to ram a broken glass into some camp guy’s face. He was supposed to have propositioned them. Everyone knew he hadn’t. They had shoved the guy up against the wall with the jagged end of the glass inches from his throat. He had squawked out in horror. Suddenly the place had been full of screaming queens all fighting to get out of the place, protecting their faces and their names. It was the first time Arthur could recall seeing straights going out of their way to bash up queers. Poofter, they had called the guy. The word still reeked of the insult to this day. Poofter, camp. Mein Kampf — my struggle, long before it was Adolf Hitler’s. But in those days, out in the open, the parks and beats had been safe. The patrols went through but they couldn’t keep up with the numbers, so you were safe. St Kilda Road had been a sight to the eyes. Flinder’s Street up to the Shrine — you could see them swinging their hips along, offering and finding anything you could imagine. No matter how much people said things had progressed, there wasn’t anything you could do now that they didn’t do in those days too. The bushes in the gardens had been alive, yet no one seemed to get hurt. Arthur remembered an enormous negro he had picked up one night off one of the Yank ships. They had met at the beat on the corner of Toorak Road. It was gone now, filled in by the council one night. The sailor had looked like King Kong in the half-light but was as gentle as a baby in the bushes of the Alexander Gardens. He had made Arthur promise to come back and meet him the next night, called him “my white princess”. Of course Arthur hadn’t gone back. You couldn’t be seen with a negro by the other Yanks. He told the other queens about it though. The giant penis story was kept alive for years but Arthur never told them how the guy kissed his hand as they parted under the lights of Prince’s Bridge. That’s what sex in the park had meant to them during the war. Things had changed. Arthur couldn’t understand why. Where had all this anger come from? What could lead a young guy to go out specifically to thump up queens? What had led them to thumping back? Arthur didn’t understand anything anymore.

He heard a noise at the door, then it opened. Frieda stood there looking startled as ever. She’s come to make sure I’m not dead, he thought.

“Aren’t you getting up lazybones, uh?” she asked. He shrugged his head and turned over.

“Suit yourself,” she said and shuffled out again.

“Old pussy,” she mumbled to herself. But she was grateful. Glad he wasn’t dead, glad not to be alone. Arthur had always been his mother’s boy; now he was hers. It was as if her own family had been only coincidental to her life. A period of time occupied until summoned back again to her mother’s house. Now there was only Arthur to care for and her job in life would be complete. He was still a child with his vanity, his false hair and those secret night excursions. She couldn’t leave Arthur alone, she would have to be there until the end. It wouldn’t be right, a man alone. Arthur heard what she mumbled as she shut the door. An old pussy was he now? Stupid old goat, what would she know? She couldn’t even look after herself. Frieda had never been close, they’d never been able to talk like he could with some women. The movies were just a waste of money to her. She had thought Joseph Cotton looked like the man in the hardware shop near the market. They probably did look alike by now. Old men and corpses all look alike. And Golden Boy started to cry. He didn’t want to end his days in prison. Frieda returned clattering noisily at the door. She bore an old wicker breakfast tray. She forced him to sit up while she plumped up the pillows behind him, then placed the tray on his chest. It was too awkward for him to reach. She muttered something and fumbled her way out again.

“Just leave me alone, do you hear,” he shouted at the closing door. She made no reply.

“Poor old fool’s been crying,” she thought to herself He was the only man she had ever seen cry — except at funerals, that was. She’d seen it before, like when that funny old friend Ronnie had come round for the last time after mother had died. He hadn’t cried at his mother’s funeral but he had shut himself in his room and cried after Ronnie had left. And there was another time too. They had heard over the radio that Ronnie had been run over — dead. It was such a shock hearing it over the air like he was a celebrity or something. The shock had really got to Arthur. It was as if he had never really recovered even now. Arthur looked over the top of the tray and stared blindly at the dressing-table mirror beyond. He could feel the slow teardrops moving down the furrows in his face. They moved silently, but occasionally the crockery rattled on the tray before him as his chest jerked slightly up and down. The ginger toupee on its wigblock shone synthetically from the dressing-table. He tried to focus on the mirror but could see only an old man looking questioningly back. There was another wig he had worn once years ago when Golden Boy had made his debut at the club. Bridge club by day, cabaret by night. Drag had been very big then, they had all done it. Arriving at the club and changing there, emerging like swans from the dressing-rooms to sit coyly at their own tables, only mixing with those you knew or were introduced to. Meetings were set up formally in those days, none of your casual fraternis-ing. Then once a year, the debs’ night. He had made his coming out there like all the others. Dressed all in white, gloves, trains, more feathers than in a mattress factory. And the wig. Curls of gold. Guided down the steps to a man stiff and formal in evening dress. There had been glamour in those days and it was all so nearly in his reach. Now by day he wore his cheap wig, his plastic teeth and the grey flannel trousers of old age. The crotch met at his knees and the waistband was as large as his chest. These days he looked deformed with his clothes off. From behind, his bottom had completely disappeared. It was only from the front that you could see it had retreated into his body to come out on the other side in the form of a hard ball-like stomach. It hid his feet and dwarfed his genitals. Only by the dishonesty of night did it tempt anyone into activity. He still did the beats but these days it was mainly as a voyeur. Few men showed interest in someone of his age and when they did, his capacity sometimes let him down. It was time to admit that he found it hard to sustain an erection. Erection — the word made him blush. At sixty-eight it was hard enough to get one at all, let alone keep it up for hours while people dallied and made up their mind. His best hope these days was to take his teeth out and do what the Americans liked best. All the Yanks he had known and that was all they ever wanted to do. Cocksucking Yanks. Even McCarthy hadn’t been able to keep them from that. A whole history of repression, that was his life. He looked down at his body. He remembered when it had been so good he had paraded it at the swimming baths. The City Baths. Men Only in those days and of course at all the baths it was nude swimming. They had ruined it letting the women in and going mixed. It had eventually closed the City Baths. Nice to know they had reopened them now and that they were cruisy all over again. All those male bodies and he had strutted with the best. Eyes meeting eyes. Splashing around, touching under-water. Outswimming each other. Following eyes watch-ing chests, buttocks. Men too excited to get out of the water. Then two strangers managing to arrive in the changing-room at the same time. Those furtive trips to the communal showers. Only two showers — how could you avoid making physical contact? Discretion, and you would never make a mistake. He remembered well one such encounter that had started under the showers at the baths. They had gone for a drive along the Yarra, leaving the car at Studley Park. On foot they had walked a long way down the bank, and there beneath the summer night’s sky had made love on a blanket. In the showers he had thought the guy like Johnny Weismuller; in the moonlight he could see he was Adonis. They had walked back to the parked car, hand in hand through the darkness. He had found the next day his clothes were all marked from the grass. He had been back to the baths again and again but such nights are not repeatable. He had made love to a god on a blanket by the river and for that night Golden Boy had been a god too. He heard the side door shut as Frieda left on her Saturday morning ritual. The TAB betting office must be open already. He manoeuvred higher up the bed and tested the teapot with his fingertips. The tea was cold. He tried to move. The teapot rattled awkwardly, then remained still. Grasping the sides of the tray, he twisted his body round and swung his legs out of bed. Nothing had spilt. He sat stupidly for a moment on the edge of the bed still holding the tray. He then stooped forward and slid it onto the floor. The crockery clattered dangerously. Arthur watched with interest until all movement stopped. True to his earlier vow he then again clawed his way low beneath the covers, retreating into their safety like an injured possum into the protection of its tree. He wasn’t going to get up until everything was clear in his mind. All rationale had deserted the crazy world out there and he wasn’t going to join it. In the cold moonlight of a suburban park he had been forced into commando action. Kill or be killed; maim or be maimed. The world had gone mad. A thug had come to bash and destroy and had himself been bashed and destroyed. The justice that far was plain; but that Arthur, at his age, had beaten to death a young man in his prime of youth, was as unpalatable as it was improbable. Queens and straights were not at war, so why had he and the others killed with little motive and no compunction? It was an ignoble end to anyone’s life. What of Golden Boy? Had Arthur beaten him to death too in one and the same action? He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, ever. Sinking lower into the protection of his bed, Arthur closed his mind to this and all other thoughts. He drifted into a fitful sleep where his body was at rest and his mind tormented and active. He saw himself and Ronnie both resplendent in evening dress, descending the stairs into the foyer of the Regent Theatre. The performance was over; they were the first to leave as a crowd surged behind them. In the background the applause still resounded for a final curtain call. Ushers stood back, a guard of honour to the passing patrons. Ronnie was beside him. An odd thing, he felt Ronnie’s hand lightly on his back guiding him down the stairs. The physical contact in public was both exhilarating and a trifle embarrassing. He knew the warmth of what it said, feared the cut of what others would say. Ronnie’s hand on his back, then things became a blur. At the foot of the steps lights shone upwards into their faces. A new noise greeted them from below. Figures in uniform waiting. There was some kind of scuffle around him. He couldn’t see Ronnie. The damn lights blinded him. Ronnie’s hand trying to rush him on one way. Arms reaching out to drag him another. Crowds surged down the stairs all around, confusing him. He lost Ronnie. Hordes of well dressed patrons clamoured between them. He stumbled forward alone. A strong grip on his arm, something at each wrist and he couldn’t pull his hands apart. The lights flashed. Cameras behind them clicked and he was being led away. Ronnie, pushed to the ground, was held there helpless as Arthur was led away by the police. He started awake, springing up and gazing disoriented at the room around him. The familiar blue and white curtains were lit by the early afternoon sun. He brought his hands to his temples and gazed around. He was alright, his hands told him; bald, but alright. He dropped his hands to rest on the agitated bedclothes over his body. He gasped for reality, groping in the void. A familiar sound came to his ears, reassuring in its normality. Frieda was listening to the races on the wireless in the kitchen. As long as she could remember she had always had the races. Pity that today they interrupted the broadcast with a news flash about identifying some dead boy. She didn’t catch whether it was a boating or a car accident. Car, she decided. People didn’t drown like they used to. She poured herself another cup of tea. Arthur would be asleep. It was as well to leave him alone. Nature was the best cure, that was her philosophy. Arthur lay in bed listening to the high-pitched call of the races from the back room. It had never interested him much. He’d never got into the Members’ Stand and considered it degrading to be in the outer. For a period — when was it? Oh, twenty years back, maybe thirty — he had gone to the wrestling a few times with a friend. He liked watching the bodies cavorting about but had to be continually reassured that no one was really being hurt. It was alright as long as none of it was real, like in the movies. You could see that the punches always missed in the movies and Arthur liked it that way. If only last night had been a charade like that too. But he had a feeling that once he left that bed, he would know it was all real.