The Americans, Baby Read online

  About the book

  First published in the early 80s this is a timeless collection of stories exploring physical and psychological boundaries, some tentatively and others with vigour.

  In The Americans, Baby the milieu is a Sydney under-40 population who, hoping that being earnest or outrageous will make them feel real, are left saturated with anxiety instead.

  An inherent resistance to American cultural intrusions and the risks that those from a great powerful land such as the US take when they meddle in another culture (they can be snared, seduced, destroyed) are explored with traditional Moorhouse flair and wit.

  The stories are timeless in their concerns, and explore ideology, idealism, conflict, relationships and sex.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dell Goes into Politics

  The American, Paul Jonson

  Becker and the Boys from the Band

  The Girl from The Family of Man

  The Story of Nature

  The American Poet’s Visit

  Five Incidents Concerning the Flesh and the Blood

  The Machine Gun

  Who is Sylvia?

  The Revolutionary Kidney Punch

  Becker on the Moon

  A Person of Accomplishment

  The Coca-Cola Kid

  The Girl Who Met Simone de Beauvoir in Paris

  The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled

  Soft Drink and the Distribution of Soft Drink

  Jonson’s Letter

  Anti-bureaucratisation and the Apparatchiki

  Jesus Said to Watch for 28 Signs

  The Letters to Twiggy

  Notes

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright Page

  Dell Goes into Politics

  Dell lugged her bag off the Coolamon train and felt instantly grimy, and very countryfied. Her white make-up didn’t seem to help, nor her Oroton handbag.

  Billy Toomey, who worked on the railway station, gave her a funny smile and hullo and then her mum came over and her dad. There was the kissing and then they got into the utility.

  ‘Gosh, we’re glad you’ve come to see us, Dell,’ her mother said.

  ‘About bloody time,’ her father said, friendly for him.

  She thought to herself that she hadn’t come to see them, to sleep in that rotten narrow bed, in that room in that shack of a house with a chip heater. She’d come back to marry one of the Lindsay boys. Perhaps. Maybe. Maybe not. Come off it, Dell.

  ‘It’s over a year now, love,’ her mother said. ‘Lovely bag you’ve got,’ touching the Oroton bag. ‘Always wanted a bag like that.’

  The utility stopped outside, the kids came out. Little Terry in his singlet, his prick bouncing, no hairs. It’ll do its bit one day, she thought, kissing him. Then kissing little Marge.

  ‘What you bring us?’ they shouted.

  She handed around the goodies.

  ‘Got a young man yet?’ her mother asked, as they went inside.

  ‘No – at least not one.’

  ‘What happened to that young schoolteacher?’

  ‘Oh him …’ Kim and his politics and sex and always wanting to be doing something different to her in bed, always teaching her, ‘he was a bit odd,’ and he was married now, teaching somewhere out this way, where she didn’t know and didn’t care.

  ‘What you mean odd?’ her mother said, fearfully, knowing the word had something to do with sex or madness.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean it that way,’ she said.

  ‘You were pretty keen on him for a while.’ Her mother made a pot of tea and put out the mixed sweet biscuits – the real treatment.

  ‘Bet she’d like a beer,’ her father said, ‘the city girl now.’

  ‘She’s not going to be drinking in this house so early in the day.’

  Her father laughed and opened a bottle of beer. ‘You have one if you want.’

  She had tea.

  Flies in the afternoon sun smell of old lino wearing further and further away from the doorway and the sink and the stove, rotting leaves from the fruit trees, rotting fruit. Harry Lindsay would at least be able to afford a new house. Kim had always lived in old houses. She couldn’t understand it. She wanted a new house.

  ‘What do you do, Dell? – in the city, I mean.’ She knew her mother was dreaming she’d gone to the city too, instead of staying in this hole. Which was the hole?

  ‘Oh, you know …’

  ‘Dancing, you go dancing?’

  ‘No,’ she nibbled an oatcake, ‘only at parties. People don’t go dancing.’

  ‘At least you haven’t got yourself into trouble,’ her father said, trying to play the concerned father bit.

  ‘You’d be the last to hear.’

  She looked at him, drinking beer from a hotel glass, sitting there, King of the Kitchen Table.

  ‘What else?’ her mother prompted.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ She twisted, restless, not wanting to be there. She stood up and walked to the gauze door which was still broken, and looked out across the paddock to the silos. That bloody chip heater and that bloody old bath tub in the bathroom out the back.

  ‘You’re not in trouble, are you?’ her father called. Did the old bastard really want her to be in trouble? To wet his dirty old mouth.

  She didn’t answer. She thought for an odd second maybe she wished she was going to have a baby. That would be something.

  ‘Answer your father.’ Her father had obviously been drinking and was being the father. Wanting to know her sex life. Fishing around. If he only knew.

  ‘Leave her alone, Dad,’ her mother said. ‘She’s scarcely in the house before you’re at her.’

  ‘I’m not at her,’ he said, ‘I asked her a civil question.’

  They ignored her for a time while they squabbled themselves.

  She climbed through the half door in the roller shutter of the service station and in the dimness her eyes were caught by an oxy welder flame.

  ‘Put that bloody thing off, Harry,’ she shouted.

  Harry Lindsay turned his goggled head towards her and switched off the oxy torch.

  ‘Jesus, it’s you, Dell.’ He pushed his goggles back on his head and, wiping his hands on his overalls, came over. ‘I heard you were back.’

  ‘You work on Sundays too – haven’t you got a union?’

  ‘Just doing these harrow blades for Ridley.’ He hugged her with one arm and kissed her on the lips. ‘What’s all this union business?’

  She pushed him away, saying, ‘You’ll get me all greasy.’

  ‘You’re pretty good on the eyes.’

  ‘Take me for a drink then,’ she said.

  ‘The Royal open yet?’

  ‘It looked open to me when I came past.’

  ‘Hold on, then.’ He went back to the harrow blades and chipped at them with a hammer. ‘It’ll do.’

  He unzipped his overalls and pulled them off over his army boots. He wore a pair of shorts and a dirty floral Hawaiian shirt under his overalls.

  ‘You’ve certainly learned how to dress,’ she said.

  ‘What’re you doing home, then?’

  ‘Thought we might get married,’ she joked.

  ‘OK,’ he pinched her backside, ‘why bother about getting married?’

  ‘Get your hands off,’ she said, holding them briefly. ‘Don’t touch the fruit before you buy.’

  They walked to the pub.

  A few Holdens were already angle parked in against the ditch outside the pub.

  ‘So you’re not married yet,’ he said. ‘Aren’t those city fellows paying any attention?’

  ‘I’m n
ot complaining – never lonely in the big city.’

  There were greetings and joking when they went through the Sunday morning drinkers.

  ‘You old enough, Dell?’ the publican called out, winking at her.

  ‘Old enough for what?’ one of the men laughed.

  ‘You’re too old, aren’t you, Bill?’ Harry said. ‘Shrivelled off, hasn’t it?’

  He brought the beers to a table and the conversation of the pub left them alone.

  ‘Like the city?’ Harry asked her.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘at least I don’t have my bloody old man pushing me around.’

  Instead I have everyone else pushing me around, thinking of the time she’d been with Kim and those intellectuals.

  ‘We thought you’d never come back,’ Harry said, still eyeing her over.

  ‘So did I.’

  She felt, whether she liked it or not, any interest she’d had in Harry was draining off as she looked at him and listened to him. She knew whatever mad idea she’d had in her head, she would never marry Harry Lindsay. But she wasn’t sure she’d ever believed she would.

  The Sunday pub was changed by a noisy, smiling, bald man who hit the bar with both hands and called for drinks. He began shaking hands. He used both hands, she noticed, the left one to hold the person near the elbow and the right to shake the hand.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked Harry.

  ‘Fuller, the local member – I hear he’s got a bunch of singers from the city.’

  She looked him over.

  ‘What is he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Labor or Liberal or what?’

  ‘Labor Party.’

  ‘State or Federal?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know – he’s in Sydney I guess – no, it’s Canberra – how come you know so much about it all?’

  ‘I don’t know – that’s why I’m asking you.’

  Harry had a thick head.

  ‘I mean the State or Federal thing,’ he said, troubled.

  ‘Christ, Harry, that’s about the least you can know.’

  Harry looked as if he’d got a bee flying around him.

  People were calling out to Fuller and wisecracking him about folk singers.

  She looked at him and all her fury about the town and the fact she didn’t have a man here or in the city or anywhere – not one that she wanted, that was – came to her, and before she knew it she’d yelled out, ‘Why don’t you bring the boys back from Vietnam?’

  ‘Aren’t there enough around, Dell?’ someone said, the bar laughing.

  She almost blushed, it was as if they’d seen her thoughts – but she hadn’t meant it that way.

  Fuller laughed with them and ignored the question and went on talking with the men.

  ‘Well, don’t I get an answer?’ she called out again.

  Fuller looked at her and came over. ‘As soon as we get into office we’ll be looking into the whole question of our Asian commitment.’

  ‘You don’t sound so sure about whether you’re going to bring them back.’

  ‘It’s not a simple matter to withdraw from a war like this.’

  ‘Sending them over there and putting them in gaol when they don’t want to go seems pretty simple.’

  Fuller backed off, saying ‘You can be sure we’ll do something the day we get control of the government benches.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said loudly and disbelievingly, ‘half of them’ll be dead by then.’

  Harry Lindsay was squirming in his chair. ‘Jesus, Dell, what’re you doing? – what’re you carrying on about?’

  ‘They make me sick.’

  She realised that she’d been mouthing a few of the things she’d heard with Kim and the others at meetings she’d been dragged along to and those parties where they’d talked about it for hours while she stood drinking and wanting to dance, or trying to talk to those crummy rich bitches from the university in their St Vincent de Paul clothes. And the demonstrations where she’d walked around and around in circles.

  They made her sick. It made her sick too that she’d been using Kim’s words. Falling back on him.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to be back anyway, Harry,’ she said. ‘Get another beer,’ finishing off her first.

  ‘Sure, Dell,’ he said, with his voice showing how unsure he was of her now and how uneasy.

  What did she care?

  He’d drop an oxy torch on his prick if she told him some of the things she’d done since leaving this hole. Some of the things that had been done to her, more like it. Once she’d gone with three boys in a park – each had done her twice.

  After a few mouthfuls of her second drink, Harry said, ‘You’re not a commo, are you? – I mean, it doesn’t matter a damn to me – I couldn’t give a stuff about it all.’

  ‘I’m a Trotskyist,’ she said, for the hell of it, marvelling at the sound of it.

  ‘A what?’ Harry said, as though he were getting into a bog.

  She studied his wrinkled eyes, and wondered if she could explain. Did she in fact know what a Trotskyist was? She didn’t.

  ‘Not a communist,’ she said. ‘A Trotskyist supports the real revolution – the real revolution of the people.’ She remembered something. ‘All power to the Soviets,’ she added.

  Harry glanced to see if they were being listened to and looked back at her with a bewildered face.

  Then she gestured at Fuller. ‘The Labor Party are all bloody right-wing social democrats.’ She spat the words the way she’d heard them in the city, carried away, wondering if that was what the Labor Party was, and why they were dirty words or did she have it all wrong? Of one thing she was sure: Harry wouldn’t have the faintest.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ was all he could say.

  She sighed. ‘Not really,’ dropping into a little girl’s voice, giving away playing the game, ‘not really at all – I’m all mixed up, Harry,’ she said, meaning it, patting his hand. Why didn’t she just marry him?

  ‘You sort of sound it,’ he said.

  They ate their tea – Kim would probably have called it dinner but you don’t eat spaghetti on toast for dinner – with the noise of the kids and her mother’s constant reprimands and calls for a little quiet, and the silence of the father who took no notice of anything.

  She watched him push away his plate having eaten the spaghetti in what she thought was a minute flat. ‘What’s this bloody politics nonsense I hear you were on about in the pub this morning, which is no place for you to be anyhow?’

  ‘I’m a big girl now,’ she said.

  He muttered and laughed to himself.

  Her mother took on her puzzled look again, ‘What do you mean, politics business,’ again terrified by what she didn’t know. Her father turned his chair away noisily from the table, stretching out his legs and picking up the Sunday paper for some sort of shield – looking for something he hadn’t already read.

  ‘Oh, she was blowing her mouth off in the pub at Fuller – I heard it was a right bloody scene.’

  ‘It was no scene,’ she said. ‘He ran like a startled rat – or a cockroach.’

  Her father almost grinned. ‘You should shut up – there’s only one way to get along in this world – shut up.’

  ‘What you know about politics?’ her mother said, suspicious, as though she’d suspected she might also know about sex.

  ‘More jam, Mum,’ Terry shouted.

  ‘Wait, there’s pudding,’ her mother said, going about getting the pudding.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, realising she loved spaghetti on toast, not having had it for a year, ‘but more than bloody Fuller.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ her father said, ‘but it’s no reason for you to be a knowall.’

  ‘I don’t like you going to the pub on Sundays – and in the morning too,’ her mother said.

  ‘It was a joke on Harry, really,’ she said, laughing at his screwed up eyes. ‘He nearly ran out of the pub.’

  Her
father snorted.

  ‘He’s doing very well,’ her mother said defensively. ‘He was keen on you before you went away.’

  ‘He’s not any more – that’s for sure.’

  ‘So you fancy yourself as a bit of a politician,’ her father said, trying not to show any interest beyond the Sunday paper, she sensing that he was sort of fascinated. Realising that they were talking to each other instead of shouting, would you believe.

  ‘Oh – I went out with a boy who knew a lot.’

  ‘Not the schoolteacher?’ her mother said, trying to keep up with the conversation and pass around the pudding. Saying it as though there was something nasty about a schoolteacher being interested in it, putting it together with the word ‘odd’.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Schoolteacher,’ her father said scornfully, ‘straight from school to school – what the bloody hell would they know about anything?’

  ‘He had a degree from university,’ she said, as much a defence of herself as Kim, ‘but he was a bit much.’ She laughed at what she couldn’t tell them, saw herself lying face down naked on the bed with him putting his prick up her arse, screaming ‘No, it hurts.’ And all the rest of it.

  ‘What university?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Shut up and eat your pudding,’ her mother said.

  ‘They’re a pack of bastards, politicians,’ her father said, dealing with the question in one blow. ‘They know how to look after themselves.’

  ‘I think I’ll go into politics,’ she said, quite without thought, just for the fun of saying it.

  ‘You’ll what!’ her father said, looking at her. ‘Don’t give me the …’

  ‘She’s only being funny,’ her mother said, uncertainly, ‘aren’t you, Dell?’

  ‘I’m in the Labor Party,’ she said, Kim having joined her once to get her vote at something or other. She hadn’t turned up anyhow.

  ‘They’re bloody well paid but you’ll never get your hands on any of it,’ her father said, going back to his paper. She could see him turning over the whole strange idea in his boozed head.