Paradise Found Wanting

By Gerald Sherwood

This is the story of some working class Ten Pound migrants from England --- of those who made the transition from UK to resettlement in South Australia --- and of those who did not and went back. The tale is set in a two year period in the late 1960's in and around Adelaide, South Australia, and its satellite city, Elizabeth. The author has created the characters and fictionalised the events described so to give dramatic effect to what was day-to-day routine for many migrants from their day of arrival through the ensuing months of adjustment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664106581

Book preview

Part One

1

The bone setter had left him lying on a portable bed in the plaster room in the Royal Adelaide Hospital saying when he went a nurse would be along in a minute. In the half hour since then he had drifted into near sleep remembering the accident, thinking of his workmate, MacKenna, hoping he could be relied upon to look after the tools; and bemoaning his loss of a weekend’s overtime, When he heard rubber-heeled shoes squeaking on the tiles in the corridor, approaching, he roused himself, opening his eyes as the nurse looked in reproachfully around the half-opened door. She came into the room, asking: Are you feeling better now?,

He was stretched out on the leather-covered cot with his right leg encased in plaster of Paris from his knee to his exposed toes. He did not show the querulousness he felt. There was some pain in his right foot. Yes, he said. Thanks. I feel all right now.

The doctor said you can go whenever you like. When you feel up to it? she said, encouragingly.

He raised himself only to rest again on his arms, embarrassed at his awkwardness. The plaster felt uncomfortably heavy --- more like a ton weight, and still slightly damp. I think if I can get down from here I can go, he said. His leg itched just below the top of the plaster, and he itched for a good scratch in his crotch. Both would have to wait until he was alone and could get at them. He asked, helplessly: Will I be able to walk with this?

She smiled. Sit there for a minute. You didn’t think we’d let you go like that, did you? I’ll bring a wheelchair and take you to reception where you’ll get your crutches on hire.

The leg of his trousers which was torn along the seam to above the plaster dressing hung ragged over the side of the cot. It amused the nurse. She gathered the material in folds above his knee. How is that? she said, securing it with a safety pin taken from her bodice. That will hold you together till you get home. He thanked her again.

She went as quickly as she had come. He got down from the waist high bed, leaned against it balanced on one leg, and grimaced when his ankle hurt as it had that moment he had fallen. The dull ache of a moment before now throbbed like a pulse --- swollen and constrained under the bandage. He swore at his ill luck; and stifled the urge to shout shit at the pale shaded walls of the room. The small, square room was an annexe to the one where they had set his leg in plaster. It was empty except for the wheeled bed and had a window overlooking the hospital carpark. And a wide, dark-stained door to the corridor that the nurse had left open.

Barely more than an hour ago he had been wheeled in from that corridor with the doctor from casualty who had said his leg would be in plaster for at least six weeks; that it would take as long as two months for the fracture to heal properly. He had joked about it. You won’t mind resting from your labours on workers’ compensation, will you? It will hurt a little, he had said, but that will be a small price to pay for all that relaxation.

It was taking things too easy for two weeks on that job with MacKenna, he thought, and the burst of activity this morning to make up some of the wasted time, that could be blamed for the accident. It happened when he and MacKenna, two carpenters, were working on an office renovation job on North Terrace, within sight of the hospital. They were given the work on the office partitions on the fourth floor of Shell House to do while the office staff were away on annual holiday, and while their own foreman was away on his Christmas break. Because they had no-one checking what they did each day they had taken their time. The foreman had shown up yesterday finding the work way behind his schedule; he gave dire warning of what they could expect if it was not finished on the weekend overtime he laid on.

That put the skids under them. They had started work this Friday morning on a scaffold knocked together from two trestles with an old door nailed across them as a platform. It gave them the height they needed for screwing the overhead aluminium capping to the top of the partition. They were on the scaffold together, both screwing with unusual force and arguing about the word ethnic while they worked. MacKenna lunged with his screwdriver, the platform swayed under the shifting weight.

Ethnic applies to us, he said as he pushed. To Scots and Irish as well as to Italians or a dozen other nationalities that make Australia. We are all migrants from countries in Europe.

Migrants, yes, he had argued with MacKenna. We’re always that. Ethnic? No.

It’s got to, MacKenna had insisted. The only difference is, Terry mate, some are more ethnic than others. That’s why ethnic is the official word for wog. It helps rid the vernacular of that offensive label.

When MacKenna stopped talking to grit his teeth and lunge again at a screw the scaffold suddenly collapsed. The old door split through the middle under them and they fell to the floor. It was pure misfortune that Terry, falling less than three feet, came down awkwardly on a piece of loose timber that twisted his foot. MacKenna laughed at first when getting to his feet; then looked in panic when helping Terry to his. His foot was twisted inwards on broken ankle bones.

The girl in the nurse’s uniform was back. This time with a wheelchair which she nudged close to his legs so he could lower himself into it. She pushed him in his carriage easily along the corridor towards reception. To her, he thought, his injury was minor compared with accident cases she would see on any day of every week.

You’re Irish, aren’t you? she asked.

Yes; how did you guess?

Oh, I Know by your accent. My dad’s Irish too.

Is he? I didn’t think you were. I thought you were English.

l am; actually half and half, she said. We lived in England before we came here.

Yes? So did I. For years before coming here I lived in Luton in Bedfordshire. Do you know it?

I’ve heard of it. We lived in Birming’am,’ she said, with an exaggerated Brummy’ accent on the last word. I was only a child when we came out here; I don’t remember much about any of it.

No?

No; hardly at all. How long have you been out here? In Australia?

Two years, he said, recounting it over his shoulder: Nearly two years. We’ll be two years here next month. The fifteenth of February. He would never forget that date.

How did you do your ankle? Not playing football?

No. A little laugh at the thought. I’ve never even been to a footy match, let alone play it. I fell this morning at work.

She asked: Don’t you like the footy?

No. Not what I see of it on television. They get more goals on the board than people on the terraces.

That’s what makes it different, she reasoned with him.

At the reception counter she suggested he stand and wait there. You should manage on your own now, she said. She wished him good luck, smiled goodbye, and went with the wheelchair.

The crutches were passed across the counter to him by another girl in uniform. Royal Adelaide Hospital appliance was printed along each of them. The idea occurred that this must be in case a cripple left them behind on a bus. He tried the supports tucked under his armpits. The girl behind the counter had a form ready for their hire. She asked for his name and address.

Terry Harrist.

While she filled in the details she spoke: And Luke Street Elizabeth. Your occupation?

Carpenter.

She gave him the pad of forms. Put down who you work for and sign it. There will be a charge for the crutches when you bring them back.

Starting on his way out to North Terrace he went slowly at first. Left leg forward and then the sticks. Left again, a swinging movement, gradually getting the hang of it. Outside on the pavement by the gates he paused deciding what to do. Leaning his back against the railings gave relief from the awful weight on his knee. He imagined himself being left in this state, never being able to walk normally. This will take getting used to, like learning to walk again with long arms that reach to the ground. From here he looked along North Terrace, measured the walk to the railway station, sweat already under his arms from the exertion of getting as far as the hospital gates. The walk to the railway station was daunting. With the bother of getting down there and onto a train he would have more at the other end arriving at Elizabeth in the early afternoon. His wife usually met him from the train at five oclock with the car. He decided it would be more convenient to get there at the normal time for his pick up. He turned east. His attention was drawn to a pub across the road in that direction. He touched his back pocket to make sure he had money. The day being Friday he had ten dollars with him from his wages paid yesterday. Had the accident happened on any other day in the working week there would be nothing there but his railway ticket. It was enough for two or three pints and a pie in the Botanic Hotel and later a taxi from the hotel to the station. He would sit in the pub in the society of Southwark, slake his thirst, and make for home at the usual hour. He adapted to the pendulum gait of walking with crutches. The wide pavement afforded the space he needed. Other walkers, hurrying towards him about their own business, gave him wide berth. He showed gratitude for their sympathetic weaving to one side. Why do so many look so tense? What is worrying them? Their taut sourfaces are a public expression of private unease. They have anxieties less obvious than my plastered foot.

A man coming from the Botanic Gardens passed with a big, hairy, Afghan hound dragging him faster than he wanted to go. His unease was public. He nodded fleetingly at Terry, telepathized to him : What happened to you? To him Terry would have looked his thirty-five years with his head inclined forward over shoulders hunched from the pressure under his arms. His unruly hair was tinted grey with gyprock dust. He wore a white T-shirt, one-legged trousers, and one boot. The other boot was among the rubble on the job where MacKenna had thrown it.

Once, Terry thought, as he caught the eye of the man trailing the dog, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper in Elizabeth that began with the word: innuendo? It was never published. it went on from there to —the estate agent’s letter in last week’s Paper accused me of innuendo for saying that the guarantee he gives in his contract to purchase a house is meaningless after the buyer signs, that his form of contract is a disaster for anyone buying a house from him without first making sure they have arranged finance to pay for it, that the lures used by sharp practitioners like him to rob newcomers to this State, and get away with it, ought to be outlawed. That’s not innuendo; it could hardly be more direct. Nor is it hint or insinuation to write that the pseudonym he uses---’Successful Migrant’--- doesn’t impress readers in Elizabeth who know why he is...

He slowed down from the unnecessarily fast pace he had adapted since leaving the hospital gates. He stopped to rest for a moment. The figure with the hound was just in sight, crossing the road towards Shell House. If the letter were published and came to his notice, Terry wondered, would he bother to read it to the point in question is.... Or would the wordiness be too much for him and send his eyes in search of more interesting reading; perhaps in the next letter along from someone signing themselves ‘Boiling Mad’.

Terry had left for work that morning saying to his wife that he would prefer having the long weekend free than working it with MacKenna and the foreman. How ironic that the wish should be fulfilled with a break from work that would last two months. By the time he worked again the summer heatwaves would have passed into statistics. -

This day at the end of January in South Australia would give a sweltering afternoon and held promise of a very hot Australia Day weekend. The grass and trees in the Botanic Gardens looked cool and inviting from where he waited to cross North Terrace. A park bench inside the gate gave him the idea to go in there for a while and adjust the crutches to a better length before crossing to the hotel. They were set too long for his height; the last borrower must have been a six- footer. The bench was perfectly placed in the shade of a Cape False olive from South Africa, according to a plaque by its trunk. Its branches spread wide and its heavy foliage hung low blocking out the wearing heat. And the quietness there made it seem much further than it actually was from the chaos of noise on East Terrace. When he tried the shortened crutches for fit, he found them easier to walk with; almost comfortable. He decided to sit then and have a smoke from the crumpled cigarette packet in his trousers pocket.

The garden recalled to him the Botanic Gardens in Dublin where he grew up; and the cigarette recalled the penny Woodbines he had smoked there as a kid. He remembered the time playing Tarzan with the other kids swinging from trees they were supposed only to look at, when he had dropped from a branch onto sloping ground and sprained his foot. He had walked lame then as now, all the way home to Cabra without a crutch. Some coincidence across nearly thirty years.

On random Sundays of the year, after Mass, the gang would decide to go to the Botanic Gardens. Five or six of us from the street, a straggle of working class chisellers, out for a change of scenery and an afternoon’s adventure with nothing further from our minds than botany. The long walk out along Drumcondra Road to the cemetery and beyond did not matter. Not until we faced the hungry trek back. The road out was filled with our wild, excited chatter that anticipated the good times ahead. Once inside the gardens the games began. We pushed and chased each other through the specimens of exotic plants and bushes; cactus. Breathing the heavily scented smells. Charged at each other from behind with high-pitched yells; frightened the life out of the haughty peacocks, the long-tailed gods of the walkways. Then ran ourselves, in feigned fright, when an irate gardener gave chase. ‘If he catches us it will be a clip on the ear and out’.

In some glasshouses there would be fruit: the little green apples we went there for. While there was anyone near we would wait, being cunning, putting on that we were quiet and studious schoolboys when our threadbare shorts and bare feet cried out to the world that we were not. Then when we thought the coast was clear, left on our own, we would raid: stuff our pockets full with the fruit for munching on the way back. It was a painful three mile hike that day I crashed with a snapped branch in my hands; limped home with some help from the others; prayed for the sight of the turning to our street. There must have been an easier way to get a pocketful of crab apples.

Behind the glass on the front bar door of the Botanic Hotel there was an upside notice: Men Only. It was an old fashioned place. The notice went with the colonial style verandahs that wrapped the hotel to its northeast corner of Adelaide. Terry pushed his way in with one arm and a crutch and felt the sudden coldness of the air-conditioned atmosphere. It was good to get in from the heat. There were only two men standing at the counter; they gave him a quizzical glance. He wanted his fingers on a chilled pint glass; preferably somewhere to sit and drink it on his own. His self-conscious progress towards the counter was arrested by someone’s hand tugging on his shirt---and his name called excitedly.

Hey Terry!

He turned to the familiar voice, surprised, and looked into the face of Diarmuid Brennan, laughing up at him in delighted astonishment. Diarmuid whom he had not recognised was sitting with his back out at a table just inside the door.

What’s this? Diarmuid asked, taking an amazed look at the crutches and the plastered leg. What’ve you been doing?

Diarmuid! Christ. It was as if he had jumped out of the dark corner woodwork. It was incredible seeing him again after so long. Terry nearly lost his balance. They both laughed, each at each other. "What are you doing in here?"

"Don’t worry about me. Diarmuid said. I want to know what’s happened to you."

Terry pulled out another chair by the table, shaking his head for reply. He would sit down first. I’ll tell you everything in a minute, if you’ll get me a pint.

Diarmuid was on his feet taking the crutches. He put them out of the way in the corner of the bar, still grinning at the unexpected meeting. He shifted the table to make more room for the mummified leg. He signalled to the barman two pints of beer. Right then, he said, between getting the drinks and sitting at the table, Let’s have it. What have you been doing with yourself?

Diarmuid, the same as ever; the same toothy grin behind expensive spectacles; now wearing denim shorts and singlet and desert boots; dressed for the hot and dusty conditions of outdoor carpentry in the summer. And, from his appearance, straight in here from some site. Terry took the cigarette he offered. He had not seen Diarmuid for twelve months; sitting with him now it could as well have been last week.

You’re supposed to be in Perth, Diarmuid. When did you get back to Adelaide?

Don’t mind about that now, there’s plenty of time. Tell us what’s been happening to you.

I’ve had a bad time since I saw you last Terry said, taking a gulp of — the cold beer. My first today, he said, enjoying it.

l expect it is, Diarmuid, still smiling, waited to hear more.

This leg, Terry said, is the latest of a run of bad luck over the past year. He moved his leg gingerly seeking a comfortable sitting position. Do you remember MacKenna? The Scots bloke we worked with in the bush. That time we went to the West?

The carpenter always rolling cigarettes. I know Mac. What about him?

I’m with him on a job in Shell House, just down from here. Working for Watermans. Just the two of us doing new partitions in an architect’s office. I mean I was working there until this morning. It’s supposed to be finished this weekend so it’s not likely that I’ll ever see the job again.

How did you do it? Diarmuid asked. Nothing will surprise me where Mac’s concerned.

Two saw horses that I made over Christmas and brought in for something to work from. We put a door across them making a scaffold. Solid oak, he reckoned, jumping about on it as if it was.

And it wasn’t?

No, Terry said, self-sorrowfully, with a rueful smile. It went under us and we went with it. Mac was alright; he landed on his arse.

You’re lucky you didn’t break your balls, don’t mind a foot, Diarmuid said, his voice loud in the bar, laughing, if he had anything to do with it.

He got the doctor, helped carry me down in the lift to the ambulance; and saw me off to the hospital across the road. I can’t blame him, Diarmuid. I should have made sure myself that the door was safe. It was held together by the forty coats of paint it had since it was put in.

I can well imagine. Diarmuid made the effort to sympathize: At least you were handy for the hospital. They laughed and drank.

Where are you living now? Diarmuid asked. You’re not in the rented house I last saw you in. I went out there when we got back from Perth, looking for you, but no-one could tell me where you’d gone. That was a month before Christmas, there wasn’t anybody down your end of the street who lived there last year.

We’re still in Elizabeth. We left the rented house soon after you went.

And how are you getting home? Do you want a lift?

Take me down to the station. That’ll do me.

No. I’ll take you all the way, Diarmuid insisted. When we’ve had a couple. I want to see where you live. You bought a place, did you? I thought you and Pat had gone back. Pat went home to England, Nora said.

We changed our minds, Diarmuid.

You’re still in Elizabeth? That had surprised him. His attitude towards it showed I don’t know why you didn’t get a house in Adelaide, he said, seriously, where the work is. What’s out there for a carpenter?

They had argued the pros and cons of living in Elizabeth and working in the building trade countless times before. Since their first meeting in the migrant hostel in Smithfield, where Diarmuid and his wife Nora and their three children were, just out from Ireland, when Terry, Pat, and their three children arrived there from England. From the start the two families had got on well together. The first sorrow of migration to South Australia was finding yourself suddenly in the middle of nowhere; in Smithfield hostel on the outskirts of Elizabeth, a satellite suburb of Adelaide, itself a peripheral city, not knowing what you were doing sharing a wooden hut with strangers in a country which up to then you had only read about and in a part of it you had never even heard of until the night before; and, uncertain of a future that seemed then so dislocated from all that had gone before, turning to the first familiar accent to hold on to. Both being carpenters, looking for the same sort of living to make, Terry and Diarmuid had found work together. The casual friendship that began in the hostel survived over the months that followed. The two families who had helped each other get started were often separated by circumstances.

This time last year Diarmuid Brennan and Nora left Elizabeth for Perth, West Australia, to look for something better, urging Terry and Pat to do the same. Diarmuid had then asked why emigrate from Dublin to live here? To settle for Elizabeth. You may as well be in Ballyfermot. Why not try somewhere else before getting established in a place that will never be any good for us?

Terry did not agree with moving from State to State. Was it likely to be any better over there? He would stay in South Australia and make the best of it, or go back. He would let Diarmuid find that the reality of Perth was as far from the brochures about Western Australia as was the reality of Adelaide from the brochures about it. Diarmuid sold his furniture and went, promising to write when he was settled. But no letter ever came back.

He was on his feet again to get two more drinks, waiting while Terry drained his glass. He leaned forward whispering harshly: You should not have bought a house out there. You spend half your time travelling to work.

That’s not what’s wrong with the house I bought. He had much to tell Diarmuid; but not yet. He reached for his money in his back pocket, and Diarmuid refused it.

I’ll get these, he said. "You hold on to that.’

Terry watched him waiting at the counter for service, --- his anxious face, sunburnt nose and cheekbones --- mirrored behind the bar between signwritten Ladd’s aerated waters and cordials. He was watching the barman talking to a group of three drinkers at the other end of the counter, waiting to catch his eyes when they glanced in his direction. Their first pub to drink together in was the Smithfield Hotel. They used to walk from the hostel huts across two paddocks to it on the Main North Road. Then hot sun in a clear blue sky; tall, weird treeswithout leaves or bark; and underfoot tough clumps of dried grass and millions of ants. These were their first physical impressions of Australia after the shock of the wooden huts that they then saw as bits of time that had waited an eternity for them to appear and begin building houses on every empty space.

When Diarmuid put down the two fresh glasses of beer, Terry took his turn to ask questions.

So how did you get on in Perth?

I thought it was great, he said, enthusiastically. But Nora didn’t. Plenty of work in our game and good money if you want to chase it. When we first got there I took a job in a refinery some way out of Perth. A rented house went with the job. I knew once I’d been in the house a couple of months I could pack in the refinery job and go for the better money on the building. Which I did. In six months we’d saved enough for a deposit to buy a house. In the meantime, Nora’s relatives had come out here from Dublin. With them in Adelaide she kept on about coming back here to live.

How is Nora?

She’s bearing up. I can’t wait to tell her about meeting you. She often says that Pat must have gone back to London. How is Pat and the kids?

Everyone’s fine, Diarmuid. Much the same as when you saw them last.

Nora wanted to be back here where she knew someone, so I let her talk me into it. Pat and Terry, she’d say, and now Les and Evelyn in Adelaide and we’re buried out here on our own.

Diarmuid raised his glass in mock toast and took a mouthful. So here I am. And everything went very well since we came back last October. We have a house now in West Croydon in the same street as Les and Evelyn, And I’m sub-contracting with a mate I teamed up with on holiday shacks. You know the summer houses on the south coast and the Eyre Peninsula?

I’ve seen them advertised.

Me and my mate put them up. Or as many of them as we can get. I got the job from a Saturday paper. He was looking for a partner to go self-employed with him. It’s good money if you work hard for six days a week.

And a lot of travelling too, by the sound of it. How do you manage that?

We work to a fifty mile radius, Diarmuid said, as if he were talking about yards. If it’s less than that from the city we come home every night. If it’s more we stay near the job in a hotel and work through till we’ve finished it. It usually takes us about fifteen days and then we have two or three days at home.

Who pays for staying in the hotel?

It comes out of the price we get. There’s always a pub or somewhere cheap we can stay. We’ve just finished a job on Goolwa Sands this morning. We went down as usual yesterday and slept in the shack last night. We were up again at six this morning and knocked on the last few architraves so we could get out of it today for the long weekend. Diarmuid added: We were still working on it at eleven last night.

You’re your own boss, Diarmuid, Starting and finishing when you like.

Yes. It suits me. Diarmuid was happy with the way things were going. Our next is in Goolwa again. We’ll start that on Tuesday, making the frames in the builders yard who gives us the contract. You just missed seeing my mate. He went out that door a minute before you came in.

I’ll see him sometime, I suppose, Terry said. He shifted in his chair to another position. He was stiff and sore along his thigh and hip. My arse hurts whichever way I sit. He managed to get his plastered leg to a new spot, stretched out but close to the table; out of harm’s way where no-one would fall over it.

Take that money, Diarmuid, and get two more pints, Terry told him. I know you won’t expect me to get up for them. And ask if he’s got anything to eat. Get two pies or whatever he’s got.

The narrow floor space between the counter and the street door had gradually become crowded with men in groups of two or three who had come in for their lunch-hour drink from where they were working in the area. Companies of drinkers who stood within arms’ reach of the bar, mostly men of younger than middle age in working shorts or overalls, chatting into their circle of mates. A voice said: Pig’s arse. That’s bullshit, loudly from out of an argument being carried on in subdued tones. Who told you that? The barman was now doing a brisk trade in pints. His earlier watching brief from a doorway between the front bar and the saloon next door was replaced by a continuous walking to and fro to keep this counter served. Diarmuid got the drinks to the table. He had to push his way between backs to the counter again to get the two pies. Poco a poco, was said to him by one of three Italians standing where the pies were left, eyeing him, the pies in the plate, and his route to the table. Diarmuid exchanged a laugh with him. He said they were pork!

A shiver of coolness went through Terry when he took the first sip from his new pint. Extreme air-conditioning. The coolness inside could become too much of a good thing. He took his round of crust and salted meat from Diarmuid. He felt starved.

Diarmuid said, his bitten pie in one hand, his glass in the other: One of these would go well with a jar of Guinness’s draught, Terry.

Terry ate hungrily. Two would go even better, he said. Listen Diarmuid, why don’t you and Nora come out to us tomorrow for the day? Nora and Pat will want to see each other. We can have a reunion in Elizabeth.

We will, Terry. I want a good look at your place. Wait till you see mine. It’s a real old property, mate, but it’s in good nick. The sort of house you could do a lot with in your spare time.

If you have any.

I know. But we got it cheap. Two thousand deposit and twelve dollars a week for ten years. That’s about the same as we’d be paying now for the rented house in Elizabeth South if we’d stayed in it.

Terry had a long and complicated tale to tell Diarmuid about the house he had bought. It was the moment to tell him. He was not sure where to begin. He decided to start with a mild shock for him and then fill in the details. The one we bought is a fairly new house. There’s only one thing wrong: we’re on the point of being chucked out of it.

What are you talking about, Terry?

I haven’t made any payments for nearly six months. We’ve been summoned to the Supreme Court where the finance company says it will get an eviction order if we don’t quit in the meantime or pay up what we owe. I have to show cause why I and my chattels shouldn’t be thrown out on the street. Terry made light of it. I think chattels includes the children and Pat.

You’re joking!

Terry was not joking. He explained, seriously: At about this time last year we moved into this house in Luke Street, Elizabeth. We’d been to an agent, liked the house he’d found for us, and I had the down payment in the money I’d saved when we worked in Tom Price. He told us we could buy the house right away with temporary finance and in six months we’d get a bank loan. That’s how most buyers have to do it. He took us into the finance company in Adelaide, we signed a bundle of papers, there was a justice of the peace handy who witnessed our signatures, and within a week we were in it. Going along blissfully, you know, for six months, paying the interest on the bridging loan, beginning to enjoy living here. Pat gave up any idea of going back, happy to stay for two or three years, because she knew I wanted to. I convinced her that having migrated so far we could at least find out what Australia was really like and then decide whether to stay here or not. Terry got into his stride, talking without pause. He’d told this so many times before that now it flowed off the tip of his tongue. Southwark stimulus helped.

Diarmuid listened, with increasing concern, to Terry’s account of the day the assessor came from the bank to inspect the house. He had told Pat, casually, that from what he had seen of the house it was not suitable for the bank’s purposes; it was very unlikely they would get any bank loan because in his opinion it was structurally unsound. Terry said, when he came in from work that day, his first reaction was to go and see the manager of the bank and tell him they had to have a mortgage. But the manager said there was nothing he could do, the assessor’s report was inviolable. And so said everybody else, from then onwards. And we saw plenty of people, Diarmuid. Nine months of trouble because some bastard on a whim told Pat on her own in the house that day that she wouldn’t get a loan. To say nothing of what’s to come. Maybe he went there expecting some favour, which he didn’t get, for a good opinion of the house.

Diarmuid interrupted: What bank was this?

The savings bank. The one you and I joined when we first came here.

There was much more to tell. Diarmuid, serious and shaking his head incredulously, watched Terry tell how they had gone from the bank to the finance company, back and forward to the agent, back again to the finance company, to the Good Neighbour Council, to legal aid and a lawyer, every day a letter to write, a form to fill in, or a call to make to some office in Adelaide. All in quest of a bloody mortgage. You wouldn’t believe the time Pat spent waiting in offices to get a hearing from the Migration Department, Land Agent’s Board, any Official you can think of, or the number of letters we’ve had from government offices and institute solicitors. It’s our State, mate. When you see the people in the advertisement on television passing the football one to the other, you’ll know how we felt: But at least we learned what the real message is behind the ad --- pass the buck to someone else.

You had been done, Diarmuid said, sadly. How did they do it to you after all the times we’ve talked about it? You’ve got to watch the white ones, you know that.

Maybe I was too confident it couldn’t happen to me and walked right in with my eyes wide open. Terry cut a long story short saying by last September he had had it. Up to here, he said, with a disgusted gesture to his throat. He had stopped paying interest to the finance company and had not given them a penny since.

l owe them ten thousand dollars now and that’s increasing while I’m sitting here; interest growing on interest. You can see why they want to get us out.

The bastards, Diarmuid said, now showing anger. And they’re taking you to court for it?

For the house. Because I told them I’ll pay no more and I intend staying in it. Whatever they say I’ll stay put.

It left Diarmuid at a loss for words; left him aggressive. He moved again to get another round of pints. I think we’ll have another, do you? He needed another one.

Yes. Terry wanted one, too.

The untroubled Diarmuid of earlier was grim when he sat down again. His expression caused Terry to smile. He asked: And the one who sold it to you in the first place. Didn’t you go for him? That’s who I’d have gone after for my money back. And told him to stick his house up his arse.

How could I? They were Italians. He worked in Holdens in Elizabeth and told me at the time that he was being transferred to Adelaide. When I went chasing him I found out the family had gone back to Italy. He’d left me with a house I couldn’t own and couldn’t sell; and a garden full of vegetables that the foreman in the factory remembered him by. We might well laugh now, Diarmuid, but there were times when I’ve felt like manslaughter.

And you’re in court when? Diarmuid asked.

March. The twenty fifth of March.

And Pat? How is she taking all this?

It hasn’t done her bias much good. She doesn’t worry too much now, she’s waiting, as I am, to see what happens when we go before a judge. For me it’s meant a lot of grey hairs on the barber’s cape. Terry stretched and yawned tiredly. The beer, continuous smoking, and the constraint of awkwardly sitting in the steel chair with his stiff leg were getting to him. Let’s drink up and go, Diarmuid, he said. Are you ready after this?

Yes. If you like. They both drank what remained of their beer.

Show the way, Diarmuid. I’m bursting for a piss.

In the narrow urinal where they piddled noisily together into running water and floating cigarette butts in the drain, Terry told Diarmuid: Then there was an afternoon a few weeks back when I was driving up King William Street, on my own. I was stopped in heavy traffic at a set of lights and caught sight of the bloke we bought the house from standing at a bus stop. The same short fat man; the same eyes I remembered and dark unshaven face. I looked hard to make sure I wasn’t imagining it; that my judgement wasn’t affected by all the worry I’d had to the point where every fifty year old man of Italian appearance I saw was him. It was definitely him on the edge of the kerb and I unable to reach out and grab him from five yards.

He hadn’t gone away then?

"He had been to Italy. For three months. I learned that afterwards. When the traffic moved I went with it to Victoria Square where I found a spot to park and went running back to where I’d seen him. Just in time to see him again in a bus pulling away. I raced back to the car and got behind the bus, following it from stop to stop all the way