Mug Shots by Barry Oakley Read Free Book Online Page B

me how to drive his Vespa. One twilight, when I was at the controls, we went from sealed to unsealed surface on a back road. The front wheel wobbled and suddenly we were airborne. I hit the ground hard, suffering abrasions to fingertips and hip. We changed positions on the hardy Vespa, and Kevin took me to Maryborough Hospital, where I spent a week.
    I was tended by a nurse’s assistant of Amazonian proportions. She was big, but it was a shapely bigness, and when she offered to carry my suitcase home for me I accepted. And when I offered in turn to escort her home in the dark (who would have dared attack her?) she accepted.
    The darkness improved her (and maybe me), and since we were both over six feet I didn’t have to lean over for our lips to meet. My brother and I had once been fans of the wrestling at West Melbourne Stadium. We’d seen Dutch Hefner seize Chief Little Wolf in a bear hug, and I was likewise pinioned. After some close bodywork in which I got trapped against a gatepost, I freed myself and escaped.
    Next day, when I bought my bread at the bakery, there was smirking and tittering as my loaf was wrapped, and I discovered when I returned to my room that the paper was covered in drawings. They showed, in a range of positions, a stick figure labelled ‘Teecher’ engaging with a girl the size of a zeppelin.
    I’d learned my first lesson of country town life. The next day, the third form English class, all girls, broke into giggles as soon as I entered the classroom. The prefabs we taught in were walled with windows, and the windows gave onto the road. Not long after I’d calmed them down and announced we were going to have a look at conjunctions, a couple of dogs demonstrated their function on the footpath outside.
    The windows were a mistake. Not much happened in Maryborough, and a lot of what did occurred in that particular street. There was the bolting horse incident; the peroxide blonde imbroglio (‘Who wants to ride the town bike?’ was whispered from boy to boy as she high-heeled past); the furniture van fiasco (when the back doors gave way and chairs and tables tumbled out); and the squeaky progress of Harry King and his son, their horse-drawn cart piled high with junk. They went past once a week, and the whole class would stand, turn to the window and salute.
    But the road was handy for Bob Buttsworth, the head of the English Department (there were only the two of us). Bob, bustling, jovial and pencil-moustached, was quick to recognise he had a fellow malcontent. ‘We’ve got to get out of this,’ he’d say. His way out was a complex betting system (‘The Graduate System’, the advertisement proclaimed—‘Devised by a university academic.’). He did well out of it, at least for a while. For Bob, the road was perfect. He could slip out and listen to the mid-week races in his car. Apart from the horses, his other interest was his new black Holden. A row of cleaning cloths hung from his garage wall, with a label above each: Bonnet, Hubcaps, Boot, Mudguards, Windscreen. In the dim light, the trophy glowed.
    I spent an occasional evening with Alf Berryman, a fellow inmate of Wandsworth. Alf was old and deaf and ran music classes, in front of whom he’d sometimes fall asleep after putting on a record. His morning departures for the school were one of the sights of the town. His vintage Riley gave out whirring death-ray noises when he started it up. Then he’d whine down the driveway and head straight onto the road, to angry tootings from cars he’d narrowly missed.
    Most weekends I followed Bob Buttsworth’s advice and took to the highway to Melbourne. Friday was sports day, so I could set off early in the afternoon and hitch a ride, often with commercial travellers, who’d sometimes insist on calling in to hotels on the way—drinking from Castlemaine to Kyneton to Diggers’ Rest. You could drink after hours if you