Jack of Diamonds by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page A

maybe eat it ourselves. Eventually, she simply gave up. You couldn’t waste perfectly good food like that.
    He can’t have been all bad – he seemed to have plenty of friends. One of my school pals said his father had called my dad generous because he’d never let a pal go without a drink. We knew all about that! Perhaps he used up all his generosity in the tavern. At home he was a morose grunter – nothing seemed to please him and I can’t remember him ever saying anything nice about my mom or speaking kindly to her.
    Maybe he resented her for giving him only one kid, a boy he couldn’t really enjoy in the way some other fathers seemed to enjoy their sons. On Sunday mornings he’d come out of his bedroom just as we were leaving. Scratching his crotch, he’d called after me, ‘Fuckin’ mama’s boy! Tit sucker!’
    At school we once had to write an essay on the subject ‘Why I like my dad’. The girls had to do the same about their moms. I was forced to invent a whole lot of bullshit, saying how lucky we were to have him. Later, Miss Mony handed back the essay and said quietly, ‘Jack, imagination in a child is a good thing, but sometimes you have to stick to the facts, to the truth.’ She must have guessed the cause of the split lips, bruised cheeks and black eyes I occasionally sported, or maybe she’d heard about my dad somewhere. But she was dead wrong about telling the truth. A boy never talked about having a drunk for a dad, never ever. It was a lousy choice for an essay topic and she should have known better.
    A drunken bashing was a source of personal shame, always kept within the family. A thrashing – or a good hiding, as it was sometimes called – was quite different. Six of the best on the bum was the definition of a thrashing, and you could talk about it if you wanted to. Thrashing a child for a misdemeanour was accepted practice in all families and happened when your dad was absolutely sober. The adage ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was a universal truth at that time and, as far as I can gather, applied in proper middle-class homes as well. You can be sure everyone knew the difference between a thrashing and a beating, and who were the truly violent drunken fathers. There were no secrets in Cabbagetown. But still, you never admitted or talked about a bashing, even when you came to school with a battered face. The doorknob had a lot to answer for.
    So my home life was divided into two parts: a father whom I avoided, and a loving mother. Somehow my mother’s part outweighed my father’s, and all things considered, I was a pretty happy kid. My dad did one good thing that was to change my life: he gave me the harmonica for my eighth birthday.
    School was good. With my quick wit and easy manner, I was quite popular, though I never had a best friend, preferring my own company. Still, in the summer there were plenty of boys ready to play marbles in the schoolyard, or muck about after school among the deserted factories and along the river, and in winter play shinny on the frozen pond. By the time I’d turned eight, I was well ahead of the other kids my age. I mean, I couldn’t help it, with all that reading and with the stuff my mom and I learned on weekends, and especially with Miss Mony pushing me along. Just before she left for Vancouver, she told me I should be at another school, because ours wouldn’t let you skip a class, let alone two, which she said was what I needed to do. ‘Jack, the principal here doesn’t understand children like you who really want to learn. He’s been at Cabbagetown School too long and simply doesn’t know how to handle truly bright children.’ But I knew what she’d done for me was much better than being promoted to a class where I’d probably have to endure a worn-out and dispirited teacher, and the snubs and slights of the ten-year-olds, on top of ostracism in the playground by guys of my own age for being too clever for my own good. She’d set me