The Beat (3 page)

The afternoon slowly passed. The light changed, the noises outside altered. The day was passing by. He was going to have to leave the bed soon. Finally, late in the afternoon, his bladder won out and he had to sneak along the passage to the bathroom. With any luck Frieda would be too engrossed in Moonee Valley to hear him. He stood peeing far back into the bowl so it hit the porcelain and made less noise as it trickled down into the bowl. He cringed at the noise of the flushing and crept back along the passageway using the wall for support. When he returned to his room, he realised his breakfast tray had gone. He tried to remember if it had been there when he left. He couldn’t be sure. He got back into bed anyway. That was one thing about Frieda, she would move around quietly and pry where she had no call to. She knew not to tidy his room but couldn’t keep herself out of it. Sometimes he felt like planting one of those magazines under his mattress just to shock her. Young men nude in army boots, escort services, that sort of thing. He chuckled, he couldn’t help himself; but he wouldn’t do it. Things had all become so much more blatant. Arthur couldn’t understand how the whole thing had started. One day he had picked up a newspaper and there it was, male-to-male sex as close as a phone call away. Dreams, fantasies realised for the exchange of cash. Somehow it didn’t seem right, sex as a business transaction. There had been few commercial guys around in his memory. Oh you heard a rumour or two around the pubs — someone had made an offer, someone else had accepted — but that was all. In his youth it had been a young man’s prerogative to receive presents — clothes, outings, food even — but not hard cash. How could you pick up a phone and order what you wanted? It was so impersonal. Until you saw the boy you wouldn’t know what you wanted. You might not want anything at all. Even through the Depression he couldn’t recall any commercial guys. Young people today had no romance, just price tags. The gays were as bad as the straights. He just couldn’t figure how things had gone so wrong. The beats had always provided free sex. He had always believed it was degrading to pay for it. He couldn’t change now, although he knew many of his vintage had. It wasn’t for him. He remembered the sheath of gladioli and was glad that Golden Boy had been wooed that way instead. The poor creatures today were missing so much. Their time was money. To him time had been romance. The nights of going to the theatre with some handsome man. The plays, the musicals, the Tiv. Until he met Ronnie, his dates had never had the courage to sit with him. They had always had separate tickets, seeing each other only after the show for a discreet supper. With Ronnie they had sat brazenly together. No need for the cover of two of the lesbian girls he knew from the coffee houses, not with Ronnie. Ronnie had been very modern thinking. Arthur had always held back. He had been so embarrassed the night they had stayed at the Melbourne. Everyone there was gay. The place only had about eight rooms for accommodation, but Arthur couldn’t face the reception desk the way Ronnie had. They had been so excited spending the whole night together they hadn’t got around to having sex. It had been so, so romantic. They should have lived together at the end. After his mother’s death there should have been a time. But the end had come so suddenly. It was after Ronnie’s death that Arthur had started to do the beats again. It was the second time in his life. The first time around he had been young, pretty and in demand. This last time he had known the rejection, the desperation and the loneliness of spending old age alone. At first it had been hard even to find them, things had changed so much. Many had been lost or destroyed. The Trak had been buried and the last wreath laid years before. He tried the Town Hall. It was closed. He tried the Post Office. It was now attended. The Lobster Pot still stood in its Victorian splendour, but judging by his sojourn there, nothing had been caught there for years. Further out of town things had changed too. The dear old St George’s Road had been demolished completely. The Spanish Mission was still open but it was all rent, louts and drugs. The whole scene was suddenly more violent. Then Arthur had found this new gem, a jewel amongst jewels and so handy. It had served his voyeur’s needs well. He often went lookout for other couples or mutely watched their sexual gymnastics from the safe distance of the toilet throne. He was not averse to giving the odd blow job, with his teeth out. But there was a problem. His toupee was very detectable from the vantage point offered by oral sex. He lived in fear some bitchy queen would one day remove it for all to see. These last years of watching hadn’t been so bad. He made friends, younger men. They got to recognise his face, nod, smile, make him feel part of the communal side of it. Many spoke to him, sat in the park to swop a few words, share a joke or gossip. He wanted little more. He was capable of little more. He couldn’t regain his chance with Ronnie but he was accepted and that Ronnie would have been proud of. He thought of his ventures into the beats in the heyday during the war and before. He remembered the toilets behind Luna Park. It seemed as many flocked there as to the funfair itself. True, the sex there was quick, anony-mous, but hardly furtive. Walking through the bushes was a revelation. Heads and bums popping up all over the place, just to resubmerge when they could see it was all safe. On a busy night Arthur couldn’t remember who, how many or even what. And you never met any trouble there. Not one bad experience could Arthur recall. Not one. Yet the area was full of straights from Luna Park and the coffee shops of Acland Street, crowds from the theatre and stray sailors from the ships, maurading the shore for sex like the pirates of old. More than one sailor had found his way to the Peanut Farm and not just for a piss either. There had never been any trouble in those days. It had all been accepted. Nothing like last night had ever occurred. His line of thought was broken by Frieda fumbling at the door.

“No Frieda, I’m not dead,” he hollered at the moving door. She chose to ignore the remark. Either that or her growing deafness had muffled the meaning. She pushed the door wide and stood there, head cocked on one side, her gaze depriving him of any last vestige of privacy.

“Feeling crook, are we?” she asked. He tried to regain his dignity and in his most correct manner announced, “A little tired, that’s all.”

“I’ll make some tea. But I’m not bringing it in here.” He hesitated and shook his head. Her head twitched with impatience. “Bloody hypochondriac.” She turned and nosed her way rodent-like back along the passage towards the warm den of the kitchen. He waited several minutes. He heard the whistle of the kettle screaming its urgency into the stillness of the house. Frieda was slow getting up to turn it off. It would let him know it was ready. Reluctantly he got out of bed and struggled into the dressing-gown from the chair beside the bed. He looked resignedly in the mirror. It was an old man in an old man’s check dressing-gown he saw. Stubbornly he took the wig from its other head and placed it doormat-like on his own. It needed brushing. For Frieda’s sake he put his teeth in. He stood at the door and mimicked to the mirror, “Bloody hypo-chondriac.”

“There you are,” she announced. He didn’t bother to reply. He sat on his chair and watched her pouring the tea. It was country tea, strong and brewed, splashing into the cups in a rust brown stream.

“Drink up,” she advised. He watched her pour her precious “top of the milk” in last, then pass his cup over. There hadn’t been any cream to skim off for years, not since pasteurization. He was glad. He had always hated the greasy globules that resulted when the cream was added to hot tea.

“Did well on the horses,” she said. He wasn’t interested. She looked over at him. Maybe he was really crook after all. He looked very pale sitting there, but then Arthur had always been one for melodra-mas. Spent too much time in the movies. Last night she had been in bed before he got home. Out that late, it was no wonder he caught a chill.

“You shouldn’t go to the pictures so late.” She looked over to him.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t stay out all hours going to the pictures,” she repeated. So that was what she thought. The nights he spent hunting the streets in his loneliness, she thought he spent at the cinema. He hardly ever went to see films these days. All his stars were too old now. If they did make an appearance at all it was as little old ladies or drunks. No glamour. He’d seen that last movie Henry Fonda had made. You wouldn’t look twice at the man now and how they had all envied him once. It just made him depressed. He took a sip of tea.

“I knew you would come round,” Frieda announced triumphantly. It was good to see him coming back to normal. He’d got bad at brooding of late. He missed his mates but what could she do, they were all dead. It was alright for a woman. She still had the house to run, but growing old was tougher on a man. Once he lost his mates he had nothing. She started to set the table. He sat on. Unfolding the lace cloth, she studied it for wear. It was one Arthur had given her during the war. That was what he had been like in those days. Call in to see her, a couple of linen table-cloths, a half bottle of brandy for Alf. No one asked where it came from. The girls had always liked Arthur, though Alf had been a little hard about him at times. Any unmarried man was a poofter to him. Such language wasn’t permissible about family. People should keep thoughts like that to themselves. She switched on the telly. It would be good for Arthur to sit up for a bit. She went through to the kitchen. The television played for itself. He just wanted to sit there in the warm and think the whole thing through. Decide what to do. Say nothing? Go to the police? Wait for them to come to him? How could they justify what they had done to a young boy in the cold evening of the park? Why had he attacked them? If he hadn’t charged in the way he did, nothing would have happened. He could have just walked by and left the lot of them alone. He could still be alive today. What had they done to him to warrant such anger and loathing? And the other men. They had acted as Arthur had too. Did they understand any more than he did? Would they keep their conspiracy together? Six strangers all trusting each other. It was all so difficult to understand. Even during the war, when life meant so little to the politicians, it had meant more to them than it had last night. The television screen flickered in front of him but he took no notice. The picture had been bad for weeks. He still worried at the events in the park but could find no solution. After last night, he wouldn’t be able to do the beats without fear. Again he thought of the ease of the old days when the beats belonged to the camp guys and the straights left them all well alone. Captain Cook’s Cottage had been as safe by night as a drink at the Menzies. The Menzies. God, he had forgotten about the place. A sad day they pulled that down. The cream had drunk at the Menzies and he had been there with them. The Menzies at its height. That was a memory. He had first met Ronnie at the Menzies. People didn’t normally meet there for the first time, but Ronnie had been more forward than most. The Menzies had always been very discreet. With six o’clock closing, you only had time to meet friends and decide where to go next. But he had first met Ronnie there. Today you would call it being picked up. Ronnie had simply come up, introduced himself and waited. All the other queens were appalled but he and Arthur went off to “Bill’s” together and that was the beginning of that. Frieda’s head appeared. She looked around and said, “You’re not watching the news.” She trotted forward and aggressively yanked the knob of the set around several stations. She was such a brutal creature when it came to inanimate objects. Arthur felt repelled by her violence at times. Yet he couldn’t imagine her beating another human being to death in the park. He couldn’t try to tell her what had happened. She wouldn’t understand any of it. It was best if he just held it inside until he sorted it out. The television played through its news broadcast. Arthur ignored it. Frieda banged around uninhibitedly in the kitchen. And Arthur longed to be Golden Boy again. To be back in the past where he really belonged. Ronnie had always said you had to move with the times but Arthur didn’t want to. He was an old man, the mirror told him so. His youth, his hope, was all in the past. It could only be relived by looking back. He didn’t fit in this modern world. It hadn’t been him in the park at all. This news broadcast, it didn’t mean anything to him. Arabs were men who abducted women on white horses and Ronald Reagan was a movie star. All this stuff flashing before him meant nothing. Ronnie had always said he should be more interested in politics but it wasn’t his nature. Ronnie had been the one who wanted to change the world. He would have been pleased about the new laws, pleased about the bars, all of it. If only he had been here to enjoy it. For the second time that day he started to cry. He sobbed audibly. Freida heard it from the next room. She arrived in the doorway wiping her hands on her apron and looking bewildered. She looked at the flickering newsreader on the televi-sion. He was midway through something about giving out the name of that dead boy. She still hadn’t caught what had happened to him and here was her own brother, a grown man, crying like a baby.

“You feeling sick?” she asked. He shook his head and continued to sob. He looked awful.

“Was it the News?” she asked. “I’ll switch it off?” He beckoned her to him and she went. She stood holding his head as he cried into her old bosom. Boys died all the time, it wasn’t that bad. In the war they had got used to it. Slowly his sobbing subsided and the convulsions stopped. For a long time she stood there holding him. It felt good. No one had needed her like that for years and it felt good to be there with Arthur needing her so much.

“There, there,” she crooned in her soft old voice. It comforted and reassured them both. Finally he separated himself and sat upright again. Still the television danced its flickering image into the room. It was their room, their home, just as it had been their mother’s before them. Frieda would preserve this home just as long as there was anyone there to need it.

“It’s alright now,” Arthur mumbled and she knew it was her cue to go. He would be embarrassed her seeing him cry like that. She returned to the kitchen. Arthur shook a little to himself in his comfortless chair. He spoke aloud the thought that filled his head.