HATE TO LEAVE A LOG HANGIN So cut her loose.............this ones for you

Now, that was something!
 

Jim spent the whole evening composing a letter in reply. He was greatly honoured to receive a scholarship; he did not have seventy-five pounds at the moment but would save it up as soon as possible. By return mail, he was informed that, because they were most anxious to have such a talented pupil, they would accept twenty pounds deposit and the balance over two years in monthly payments.

Cissie, Tom, Meg and Gerald began to tell their friends and neighbours that Jim had won a scholarship; soon the whole district knew, and Jim was looked upon with very great respect. The only way anyone in Richmond received an education in those days was by winning a scholarship. Jim told me that he discovered years later that the vast majority of applicants received scholarships which were used as a weapon of high- pressure selling. However, with much pride and determination, he set out to save twenty pounds.

He opened a bank account with two pound notes. He felt important as he waited for the teller to arrange the account. He actually had money in the bank; he could scarcely believe it. The fact seemed to add to his spirit some of the pomp and sheen of the bank building with its polished wood panels, brass rails and plate glass. He was an artist saving up to enter his final training. James Patrick Roberts, he gave his name to the teller. He thought of the possibility of fame; one day, people would hear that name, people outside of High Street and Richmond……How could poor Jim know then that his name would indeed, become a household word throughout the country, for a reason he could not have dreamed of in his worst nightmare.

Outside the bank he stood for a moment gazing at the pale, dull blue of the bank book’s cover and feeling its linen texture with his long slim fingers. James Patrick Roberts; that was the first time he had seen his name on a document. A man had a bank account! He showed the book to his mother. Cissie was proud and enthusiastic. Leaving him, she went to her bedroom and returned to offer him ten shillings, the last money she had.

Jim refused firmly. “You keep it, Mum. I’ll save that money in no time.”

Though Cissie tried to avoid favouritism, Jim, with his generous manner and tender nature, was her pet child. She tried to play the role of the mother of a struggling artist on the eve of fame. When he worked in the living-room each Sunday afternoon, she brought him what she called a “four o’clocker”, a piece of home- made current cake and a cup of tea; when he worked late at night, which he often did, she brought him similar refreshments before she retired to bed after kissing his cheek fondly.

When Jim refused the money, Cissie said: “Well I’ll put in two shillings every week out of your board.”

“Ah, no, Mum there’s no need to do that. I can save six bob a week and anything I make for extra ticket writing and that…..”

“Musha,” she rebuked him, with ironic Irish air she had at times. “Won’t it be me who’ll be living like a queen in a few years, when you become famous and rich? Surely I should put in a few shillings now. Won’t it be a good investment for me?”

And so it was settled.

Tom Roberts bored his friends and workmates by swinging the conversation around to Jim’s drawings at the slightest pretext. One day he put his enthusiasm to practical use. He took Jim to interview the editor and sole proprietor of one of the local newspapers.

The newspaper office was a small stationery shop with an ancient printing press attached. They found the editor, a fat white-haired man, in the shop.  His newspaper was a sideline to his business, really only a glorified advertising dodger. The idea of employing a cartoonist and publishing caricatures of local identities, as suggested by Tom Roberts, appealed to the editor’s frustrated ambition to be a newspaper man, but he haggled, said he could not contemplate the expense of drawing and blocks.

Tom Roberts argued persuasively while young Jim stood by, living in most fervent hope. After long haggling, the editor agreed to publish a drawing of a local identity, preferably a sportsman. Young Jim Roberts will do them much cheaper than a city artist, he reasoned. Not once a week in every issue, that would be too expensive, but once in two or three weeks. And Jim was to receive ten shillings for each drawing accepted.

As the months went by, some drawings appeared and Jim’s fame spread throughout the suburb. He was banking an average of nine shillings a week. Occasionally, he was tempted to speed up his savings by investing a pound on a good thing at the races, but he resisted. As a compromise, he began again to enter some racing coupons in the hope that he could pay cash for the course in one hit, as he put it to Harry Walton.

im shaking with excitement

As I was saying................









“I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay for the groceries until next week,” she’s saying.   

“Forget it,” I’m answering, “I’ll fix it up; it’s only nine and eleven.”

And she’s coming over and leaning right across me to reach something out of the cupboard in the corner.
And I’m feeling and smelling her body right up against me. And I’m kissing her on the neck and mouth. And her lips seem to gobble me up.

She’s calming down, sort of holding me.
And she’s saying: “Don’t you want your cup of tea?”
And she’s laughing down in her throat like the pretty women in the pictures.
And I’m saying: “Tea’s no drink for a man like me.”
She’s moving towards the other door, and I’m with her, tingling all over.
“It’s all right,” she’s saying, “he’s gone to the city, looking for a job.”
And she’s taking her shoes off and lying on the bed; and she’s saying; “You’re a lovely boy, Jimmy, come to bed with me.”

And I’m hesitating, a bit frightened and thinking of Kathie for a second.
But she’s lying back there with her hands behind her head, and her dress up round her thighs, and I’m looking at her big smooth legs, and I’m lying down with her, kissing her and rubbing her body, rolling about the dirty bed with her arms around me…


Jim told me he left the house sick with shame and remorse. Back at the shop, he paid in the nine and eleven out of a ten shilling note he had intended to put in the bank. His face was flushed, and he felt Pittson and the others might guess what he had done.

I’ll never tell anyone, he told himself, and I hope she keeps quiet. Forgive me, Kathie, forgive me.
He went into the back store and began weighing potatoes into thick paper bags. And he kept mumbling to himself: “I hate her and I shouldn’t have done it.”

His shame increased when next he met Kathie. Holding her hand in the pictures, he felt despicable and unclean. Never again would he be unfaithful to her: never again, not ever.

Later, pondering over his sordid introduction to sexual intercourse, Jim’s shame turned to fear , fear of venereal disease. He began to imagine he had an itch and surreptitiously look up venereal disease in his mother’s “Doctor’s Book,” such a book as was kept on the homes of all poor people in those days, because the services of the medical profession could not be afforded. He seemed to have some of the symptoms and his fears increased.
He thought of visiting the chemist but could not gather the courage. He was afraid to kiss Kathleen for fear of infecting her.
He lost interest in drawing, but still put a few shillings in the bank each week, as much from force of habit as from any real hope that he would ever save enough money for the course.
The Institute wrote frequently inquiring when he intended to avail himself of their generous offer, but he made no reply.
After a month or two his physical symptoms, a product of his imaginative fears, began to fade, and he took up his pen again. If only he could afford that art course. The newspaper had ceased to publish his caricatures because the firm was secretly on the eve of bankruptcy. He increased the number of his weekly racing coupons and, when success evaded him, he was tempted to gamble his savings on horses in an endeavour to win money for the deposit. He’d be an old man with a beard before he saved twenty pounds, he told himself.

Life was empty and without any promise for the future. He became bored and restless and began to spend less time at his drawing-board and more at the billiard room. At billiards, he could satisfy his urge to gamble without much risk, for he was a skilful player. He and Harry Walton played a game of robbing-Peter-to –pay-Paul; they played each other billiards for money. Jim always gave Harry a start and usually won. Then, in that strange manner of Australian mateship he would give the money back so Harry would have a bank for the horses.

Harry was a good snooker player and Jim had a reputation of being the best in the district. So they often took part in snooker pools.  They won more often than they lost by dint of skill and an arrangement they had to set them up should they draw marbles to follow each other in the play, an arrangement they viewed as legitimate for it was commonly practised by their opponents.

And so the winter of 1937 approached with the ample waters of Jim’s youth running wastefully into the sea.


                                               *

                             
Summer is passing. The jail is cooling, like a hearth when the fire fades away. It is possible to breathe. It is possible to sleep without waking in a lather of sweat……

Yes, the heat has faded, and with it the memories of Julia and the world outside, the loneliness and self-recrimination, the fears for the safety of the manuscript – everything except the recreation of Jim’s life.

1937 must have been a tragic year for Jim and his family.
The depression was still on.

I had always believed the depression had begun in 1930 and ended in 1933. In truth, it lasted, Jim was able to demonstrate to me, until the beginning of the second world war.  True, the first few years were the most severe, but as late as 1939 there were still not less than 298,000 registered unemployed in Australia; in the winter of 1937, 283,000. How many unregistered unemployed there were the figures do not show. And figures are lifeless things, for what could they tell of the human suffering?

The depression years left little impression on me; my family escaped its heaviest impact; but on the minds of Jim and most others of our generation, it left a lasting scar. Jim often spoke of the depression years and seemed to be convinced that another one would occur in Australia. Yet he mentioned only the humorous and colourful aspects of life in the hungry thirties. His stories intrigued and amused me so much that I began to envy him his background. I began to wish that I had been poor and shared the comedy and fun. But later, in the remand yard, he emphasized the anguish and demoralization that came when men were robbed of the right to useful work.

                                   





                                            16




In June, 1937, Tom Roberts was sacked. Once again the degradation of unemployment and the dread of the dole clouded the household. Cissie and Tom decided to resist the dole for as long as possible. Tom looked for another job. Jim began to pay in all his wages until he, himself, was sacked a few weeks later.

Jim lost his job because, like Oliver Twist, he asked for more. He had been grossly underpaid during the seven years of his employment – and paid below the union award rate, in the last three. He asked for more under the influence of Jack O’Donnell, his father’s closest friend, who had become a player in the poker school years before and who still came to the Roberts’s house occasionally for a sociable game of euchre and a chat.

O’Donnell was an Irish Australian, by religion a Roman Catholic, by politics an adherent of the extreme left wing. Often unemployed during the depression, he was, at this time, secretary of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement, a once-powerful body which was losing its influence as the depression slowly lifted. He liked Tom and Cissie Roberts for their own sake, but never ceased trying to “activate them politically”, as he put it.

He had met with some success. Cissie had more than once donated a large pot of soup or a plate of hot scones to the Unemployed Workers’ Centre, more out of kindness of her heart than from any interest in politics. Tom had occasionally attended meetings of the unemployed and later the left-wing movement against War and Fascism, more to please his friend than to change the world – which Jack O’Donnell described as being the aim of the most simple organized action.

A single man, O’Donnell liked to visit the Roberts’s whenever he had a “free night from the struggle”. The Roberts’s, on their side, welcomed him as part of the furniture enjoying his wit and his theories which always supported the down-trodden and oppressed.

One night, soon after Tom Roberts lost his job again, Jack O’Donnell dropped in. A place was found for him around the fire, and the conversation turned to politics.

Tom and Cissie were more than usually receptive and young  Gerald, whom Jim had observed falling under the influence of O’Donnell, joined in the conversation with precocious gravity.

Presently, talk veered to unionism, and Jack O’Donnell declared that the unions were falling, one by one, under militant leadership; soon that fact would change the system.

O’Donnell, round-faced and grey-haired, spoke with the dogmatic certainty of a person devoted to a cause. His nature was gentle, a smile hovered easily around his Irish mouth, but, when talking politics, he was quite a fire-eater, as Jim termed it.

“Strong militant unions are the basis of the Labour Movement,” he asserted, putting his hand over his right ear for a moment as he always did after making what he considered to be a wise remark.
Entering the conversation for the first time, Jim exclaimed: “The pikers down at the shop aren’t even in a union!”

Jack O’Donnell straightened his back and looked at Jim in dazed unbelief, in a manner of a priest who has been informed that one of his parishioners has never been to Mass. Recovering his composure, he said philosophically: “Ah, well, the shop assistants are a backward section, poorly organized ‘cause they work in small units and are not so heavily exploited as workers in heavy industry!”

“And not so well paid either,” Jim rejoined.

Jack O’Donnell then questioned Jim about his wages and the award rates. Jim told him the amount of pay he received, then added: “I asked Pittson and the others about joining the union two years ago. Fair dinkum I did; didn’t I, Dad?”

After further discussion, Jim exclaimed: “I’m going to join the union. A man should be in his union; I told ‘em that at work.”

“That’s the spirit, me boy,” Jack O’Donnell said.

During his lunch hour the next day, Jim went to the Melbourne Trades Hall, sought out the Shop Assistants’ Union and joined, paying part of his savings in entrance fees and dues. He asked what wage he was entitled to under the award and he was told something like a pound a week more than he was receiving.

Returning to the shop, Jim told Jack Pittson that he had joined the union. When Jim asked for the award rate, Pittson resisted in a most cunning manner. If Jim insisted on the steep increase in wages demanded, the firm would be forced to sack him. Things were still bad. The directors had wanted to sack him more than once, but he, Jack Pittson, had pointed out that the money they could save, seeing Jim was working under the award, would be very small if they replaced him with a junior.
“And,” Pittson concluded ominously, “there’s a rumour that a city chain is going to buy the shop.”
Jim argued back, but his resolve was shaken: what if he lost his job?

That night he reported his interview with Pittson to his father, his mother and Gerald. The latter expressed the view that Pittson was bluffing on behalf of the company, a small syndicate of local businessmen.

“What if they are feeling the pinch a bit. Business has improved and, anyway, why should the workers carry the burden? If you were all in the union, they couldn’t get away with it,” Gerald said quite vehemently. Just what Jack O’Donnell would have said, Jim thought.

“Well, I’m in the union, and I’ve asked the others to join, but they’re frightened,” replied Jim, and he added with more conviction than he felt, “but I’m not frightened.”

“Anyhow, it’s a matter of principle,” Gerald said. “The workers have got no hope without unions.”
Jim cast a sidelong glance at his brother. He admired Gerry for his new found political convictions, shared them except that his interest in gambling, football, drawing and Kathleen combined with his happy-go-lucky nature to keep him inactive, as Jack O’Donnell called it. In physical appearance, the brothers were at the same time alike and yet in contrast. Each was like the father down to the developing cross-shaped dimple on the chin. Indeed, when later I knew them and they were each turning prematurely grey – another hereditary trait, I gathered – their likeness to the father’s photographs was most striking.

I have said they were alike yet unalike, not because I have a taste for paradoxes but because it was and remained true. They could have been twins and yet they were unalike in many respects. The contrast lay in the fact that Gerald was Jim in a minor key, so to speak. Jim had a great shock of curly black hair; Gerald had dark hair which only tended to be curly. Jim had bright blue eyes; Gerald’s eyes were dull blue with a tinge of green. Jim had an appealing, forceful personality, Gerald’s personality was pleasant but subdued. Jim was tall and vigorously strong, with a confident almost swaggering carriage; Gerald was on the tall side. But inclined to be thin, his bearing was slightly stooped and tentative. Jim was alert, impulsive, generous; Gerald slow to think and act, of calm, almost calculating nature. Of course, it follows that Gerald was a steadier and more stable character; had he had Jim’s forceful intelligence he could have been a man of true greatness; and, of course, it follows that had Jim had his brother’s stability, he, too, could have reached the heights.

During the discussion about Jim’s situation, his father, usually talkative, said little. Unsure how to advise his son, he avoided giving a decision. Jim took his silence for approval of the stand taken by Gerald.

The conference bolstered Jim’s resolve. Next day he confronted Pittson again and demanded the award rate of pay.

I should like to record that Jim’s stand on principle succeeded, but it did not – it failed under rather unusual circumstances. The rumours that the chain store was negotiating to buy the shop were well founded. The struggle on the lower levels of capitalism between Jack Pittson and Jim Roberts was resolved by monopoly; Crook’s national Stores took over the shop and sacked both of them. Pittson they replaced with one of their own managers, and Jim Roberts with a junior.
Pittson had his illegal gambling business to fall back on; he earned more from it than his wages. Jim Roberts had nothing. He trudged the suburbs interviewing grocers, but he was too old to be employed as a junior, too young and inexperienced to be employed as a fully fledged grocer. He joined the army of applicants for any job he thought he could fill, but after five weary weeks, he was still out of work. His father was still out, and Gerald was suffering one of his periodic bouts of unemployment. Margaret was working three days a week doing housework in a solicitor’s household in the upper class suburb across the Yarra River from Richmond.

All income to the Roberts household virtually ceased, for Margaret, engaged to be married to a student architect, was determined to save every penny she earned. Her boyfriend was doing likewise and they dreamed of the day when marriage would emancipate her from her commonplace, insecure environment. Cissie Roberts defended Meg against accusations of selfishness from Gerald. Cissie understood her daughter’s felings. That her children should be reduced to insecurity and frustration gave Cissie a sense of self-reproach bordering on bitterness.

Tom Roberts accepted his fate philosophically enough. “Something will turn up,” he said as he turned with renewed enthusiasm to his coupons. He had a gambler’s knack of evading grim reality. Cissie was a realist, however, and soon the dread topic of the dole entered the house again. Cissie didn’t like the idea of going back on the dole any more than Tom did; the very thought of it struck shame into her, but she knew they couldn’t resist much longer. Tom and Gerald looked for work but were prepared to accept the inevitable; Jim and Margaret were not.

Meg had all the pride and self-centredness of a young woman dreaming of love and a respectable marriage. Her very beauty revolted against the squalid, inferior situation into which she had been thrust. The slur of the dole, the brand of the word “susso” must not touch her life again. Why should she pay in her wages; how would she ever get married if she did? She answered vehemently when Gerald or Jim remonstrated with her. Why couldn’t the men find work? There were plenty of jobs if they looked hard enough.

Jim became desperate in his search for work – and not only to keep the family off the dole. What about his course in drawing? What about Kathleen?

Bickering and recrimination stalked the household. People with too much time on their hands got on each other’s nerves. The bitter restlessness of frustration entered the hearts of them all. Debts mounted and some tradesmen refused credit. The rent was behind and again Mrs Plant’s agent threatened.

One Friday evening, Cissie Roberts sat down to her meal of stew, having served the others first as was her habit. She ate without relish for a few minutes at one end of the silent table, then she spoke softly: “We’ll have to go back on the dole. Oh, I know none of us wants to, but we have no money and we are heavily in debt. Please God, we’ll soon get off it again.”
“I’ve got six quid in the bank,” Jim said, impulsively. “We don’t go on the dole ‘til that’s spent.”
“But what about your course?” his mother replied. “Keep the money, Jim, and when you get work you can start saving up again.”

“I’ll never get the course. We might as well face it; there’s no hope for people like us.”
“There is hope for people like us,” Gerald interjected. “The workers can change the world if they stick together.”

Margaret Roberts had listened to the conversation, her pretty face puckered in a frown of bewilderment. “The workers can change the world,” she mocked Gerald. “You and your communist talk. You’re just a parrot repeating Jack O’Donnell’s words. The men in this house aren’t even workers! They can’t get a job!”

Jim thumped his knife and fork down. His nostrils dilated with near rage and he breathed heavily in an endeavour to calm himself.  “Listen, Meg, we work when we can get it. Dad worked and brought you up. We don’t ask you for a penny now, ‘cause you want to get married. And don’t be so keen at running Jack O’Donnell down. If there were more about like him, things might be better.”
Meg was on the verge of hysteria: “Things might be better! He made you join the union and you lost your job!”

“He never made me join the union.” Jim was shouting now. “I wanted to join the union years ago. And I’m glad I did. They can go to hell for their few bob a week!”

“Oh, don’t shout at each other,” Cissie pleaded, losing her sense of authority after years of bearing the main burdens of the family.

“They can go to hell,” Margaret echoed. “Yes, and we can go on the dole.”

“Yeah, well listen!” Jim shouted again. “I’ve got six quid. I’ll put that in and you put in what you’ve got in the bank. That’s fair enough. Then we won’t have to go on the dole.”
Cissie Roberts recovered her calm strength: “Your father and I don’t want your money, or Meg’s, Jim. We have done our best, God knows, and soon, by the grace of God and His Holy Mother, things will get better and you’ll all find work. Then we’ll get off the dole again for ever.”
Meg began to weep. She rushed from the table and out of the room to her sleep-out. Soon she returned, rushed to her mother and thrust four one-pound notes into her hand. “There, Mum, I’ve got money in the bank, too, but we’re saving to get married and I must do my part.”

“God bless you, Meg,” was all Cissie said.

The others listened in guilty silence. Tom Roberts arose from his place at the table, walked to where Margaret was  standing with her arms around her mother’s  shoulders still weeping.
“Meg, me girl,” he said. “We all understand. We love yer, Meg; but never run down yer own kin, Meg. Yer’ll have them when everything else is gone.”

Gerald, losing his new-found tendency to moralize in the deep emotion of the moment, found his tongue first: “I’m the youngest of the family and I’ve leaned on all of you. I’m only trying to learn what can be done for us and all the other poor people. We mustn’t fight amongst ourselves……”
Cissie patted Meg’s arm: “Have your tea, Meg, and God bless you.”

They resumed eating in silence.

Tx Ltf nice to "see" a friendly face, didn't picture you as an african-american, probably a good thing when you're ancient. Apparently, "if it's black it don't crack"

youknowwhatahmsayin[;)] 

As I sometimes respond to my nosey dependants................

"I've been to London, to visit the Queen"



They resumed eating in silence.


                                                  17


In bed that night after the quarrel, Jim’s mind worked bitterly. This period of unemployment had deepened his sense of inadequacy. Cynicism came to him for the first time in his life. He had lost interest in his drawings, and rarely picked up a pencil. He needed training – as he couldn’t have it, what was the use? He played football and attended to his duties as secretary of the club without enthusiasm. He wasn’t good enough for League football, he knew that now – so again, what was the use? He couldn’t take Kathie anywhere, not even to the pictures. They still loved each other, they had long ago decided there would be no one else for either of them, but Kathie would turn twenty-one and they wouldn’t be able to get married – so, yet again, what was the use? All right for Jack O’Donnell and Gerald to talk of the struggles of the workers, but was there any way out? How long must workers wait for the new order? His own workmates had been afraid even to join the union. He had joined up and look where he ended up. What was the use?

With his father, he had, as his mother termed it, gone coupon crazy again. They jointly entered a dozen football and racing coupons each week – but again, what was the use?

In the early hours he made a decision.

In the morning he slept late. He had scarce closed his eyes all night and he had no wish to rush to meet the new day. The football finals were on, but his team was not in the four so he didn’t even have the preparations for football to entice him from bed.

After a breakfast of fried bread and tea he left the house, walked to the bank, drew out the whole six pounds and closed his account. Returning he found his mother in the kitchen and gave her three pounds.

“No, Jim,” she said. “I won’t take it. You will get your course one day if you keep the money as a nest egg.”

“Take it, Mum. You’ve got to take it. With this and what Meg gave you we can hang out for another few weeks – then maybe something will turn up.”

She accepted the money reluctantly: “God bless you, son. You’re a good lad.” And she turned from him to hide the tears that crept from her eyes.

Jim left the house immediately. He walked swiftly towards the Royal Oak Hotel. There he found Harry Walton, by now an inveterate gambler who lived only for horse-racing.

“Don’t tell me the old wowser is going to have a bet,” he chided Jim.

“My bloody oath I am. I’ve had money in the bank, saving up for the art course, and I’m going to give it a flutter.”

They fell to talking form, horses and jockeys.

“Harold Badger has some good mounts,” Jim suggested.

“They’ll be too short for my money,” Harry replied.

Soon they sat by the billiard-room fire to pore over the form guides, exchanging views about each race.

The old excitement revived in Jim. This was the life! His hopes of winning weren’t so strong; no, it was not that, he told me, but the thrill, the expectation of the desperate throw. His last three pounds, a good bank, and the prospect of an afternoon of escape. And maybe he could win, win enough for the course, and for Mum’s bills, and to get married. Who was to say it couldn’t be done? Only the other day, he’d read in the paper where a man had turned a pound into a thousand. Who was to say Jim Roberts couldn’t turn three pounds into at least a hundred? And wouldn’t he love taking a hundred quid off that bastard, Pittson!

I need hardly say that Jim lost the three pounds. Yet he enjoyed every minute of the betting and listening to the races; even the remorse that followed held a strange fascination for him.
On the next Saturday afternoon, he was at the hotel again. He had no money, but, so quickly had he sunk again into the mire of gambling, he could not keep away.

“Got any money?” he asked Harry Walton.

“About a dollar. Why?”

“I’m broke. Thought you might stake me.”

Without hesitation, Harry Walton handed him two and sixpence.

Within an hour each had lost all.

“What about asking Pittson for a bit of credit?” Jim suggested.

“You might. I can’t. I’m into him for nearly two quid. Have to bet in cash and he never stops grizzlin’ about the debt, the miserable bastard.”

Jim called Pittson aside and asked for credit. After some discussion Pittson granted it: “But a quid is the limit you can go to. Everyone bets on credit. I’m owed a fortune. Can’t the money in.”
The relationship of a gambler to a bookmaker is, for the former, often a humiliating one. The bookmaker sees only the gambling side of the punter, and views him as something of a mug, ignoring his other qualities.

Jim lost to the limit of one pound that Saturday, and so demeaned himself in asking for further credit that, within a month, he owed Pittson four pounds. Then Pittson called a halt and Jim began to avoid the Royal Oak Hotel and its bookmaker.

Jim described to me the torture of the weeks that followed. His mind was focused morbidly on his gambling debt. Once he saw Pittson approaching in High Street and ran headlong down a side street like a thief. Then, one afternoon when he returned from job-seeking, his mother told him: “Jack Pittson has been here looking for you.”

Jim’s heart pounded. “Oh,” he managed to say in an attempt at a disinterested tone. “What did he want?”

“He didn’t say.”

Jim left her, went to the bedroom and lay on the bed. How was he going to pay the hungry bastard?
Presently, his mother entered and came to the side of the bed.

“Jim?”

“Yes.”

“Why would Pittson want to see you? You haven’t been betting have you?”

“What would I bet with?”  he evaded.

“On credit; he’s always hounding people for gambling debts.”

Jim extricated himself with an outright lie; when pressed, he told his mother he owed Pittson nothing. He felt no shame. What use to worry his mother? Shame would come only when she found out. And she would find out soon enough, nothing surer than that; Pittson would come back if he didn’t meet him in the street somewhere. And meet him or not, Pittson would tell his mother or father if he didn’t pay.

Next day he ran slap-bang into Pittson in the street; he just turned a corner and bumped into him!
“I saw yer run away from me across the street the uvver day,” Pittson whined. “Where’s me money? Everyone bets on credit. I’ll have to give the game up. Can’t get me money in. What would your muvver and farver think?”

Jim blushed to the roots of his hair. His stomach nerves fluttered. Only after some difficulty did he manage to stammer: “I’ll pay yer on Friday, Jack. Fair dinkum. I’ve got some money coming in. I’ll pay Friday.”

Pittson pinned Jim down to a definite time and place. The time, five o’clock; the place, ruthlessly and shrewdly enough, the Roberts home itself.

SPOONEY,

I just noticed the name Harold badger who was a jockey in the 30s and 40's in Melbourne, in your story.

I've got a funny one to tell you. Well it's sort of funny. My old man told me how he went to visit an old bloke back in the late 30's. My old mans mate was dying so dad went to pay his last respects.

When he walked into the old blokes bedroom, his family were standing around the bed. The old bloke spotted my dad and weakly motioned to him to come closer. My father did and bent down to his old mate who was trying to tell my dad something.

My dads mate said, can you do something for me mate. My dad said, anything at all . My dads mate said, can you tell what Badger is riding today. And with that, breathed his last.

Now THAT'S a punter.

Nice LTF, if it was me it'd probably be "what's Lisa Cropp riding today"

AS FOR THIS.............

I haven't read War and Peace yet. And judging by the size of the book, and my advanced years, I'll never live long enough to sit down and read it.
HOWEVER, I am usually on Betfair most days at one time or another.

I have news for you..........It may not be bound in leather but from what I can see....     

...............you're reading it already! :cool:]

   

Hi Chante, no, fence sitting by then but always good to see a good one recapture some glory. And for

the faithful such as yourself [;)] Hope you are punting well.



And to the roller of logs, get back in here, it's a jungle out there!




shrewdly enough, the Roberts home itself.


Next afternoon, the treasurer of the football club of which Jim was secretary called with the club’s books and cheque book. The treasurer explained that he was leaving the district in the course of his employment; there was seven pounds in the bank to meet a few small outstanding accounts. Like most small sporting clubs in Australia, its affairs were conducted in a free-and-easy, informal manner. So Jim accepted the arrangement and agreed to hand in the treasurer’s resignation at the annual general meeting. Jim and the treasurer had been empowered to sign cheques; the treasurer signed a few blanks. When he had gone, Jim stood gazing at the cheque book in his hand. If Pittson called the next Friday and didn’t get paid, there would be a scene. Mum and Dad would learn of his predicament.

They mustn’t find out!

Next morning, Jim withdrew four pounds from the football club’s bank account. He felt nervous and fearful, like a forger committing his first offence.

Later that day, he found Pittson at the hotel. Pittson accepted the money with a mixture of surprise and cringing affability.

The full implication of what he had done soon struck Jim; again came the sense of guilt and the trance-like feeling of living apart, of being addicted to strange habits that sealed him off from other men. The split in his personality became stronger and hacked at his character; his only interest was his inner worry, yet he tried to hide it behind a feigned interest in the affairs of other people.

Occasionally he tried to draw, but could not put his mind to it. At the billiard-room, he yarned and skylarked the more because he did so to hide his anguish. At home he tried to act normally, recalling that melancholy moping had previously aroused his mother’s suspicions. He succeeded only in getting on people’s nerves with thoughtless remarks and excessive jesting.

He lost all sense of time until the arrival of the football club’s accounts reminded him it was the end of the month. Almost seven pounds’ worth of accounts, and only three pounds to pay some of them with. He could use the three quid to pay some of them, but what was the use of that? As bad to have stolen four quid as seven.

Of course, like all men who misappropriate money with which to gamble – and that is the purpose of the great majority of cases in Australia – Jim did not view his actions as stealing. He had borrowed the money with every intention of paying it back; indeed, his action was largely involuntary, he had little control over it.

If he paid only three pounds of the accounts, a discrepancy would remain. If he were found out, his whole life would be ruined; he would lose his friends at the football club, he would lose his mother’s respect and Kathie’s love.

So, on Friday evening, as he studied the racing form for his coupons, he told himself that the only logical next step was to draw out the remaining three pounds and bet with them, turn them into seven. That shouldn’t be hard to do – only slightly better than doubling your money! This way he could fix everything up. He did not plan to spend the money on himself. But he did obtain the personal advantage of the gambler’s elated expectancy as he strolled up to the hotel, fingering three new pound notes in his pocket and carrying the form guides.

He decided to bet cautiously. He put fifteen shillings on a horse in the first race at odds of four to one. Standing near the radio waiting for the race to start, he told himself he should have invested more, at least enough to win the needed four pounds in one throw. No, he must wait. If he bet too heavily early in the day he would perhaps go broke before he selected a winner. The horse won. He regretted his prudence but soon put regret behind him in the excitement of the struggle to select further winners.

But luck deserted him, and he had only five shillings left after the second last race. He studied the form guide, looking for a long shot with a chance; no use to back anything else but a twenty to one pop now. His decisiveness had deserted him. He could not make up his mind. Finally, he bet on an outsider, but he was not hopeful, not even desperate. It couldn’t win, he told himself, he was too unlucky. However, hope revived when the announcer called the horse out in front after the field had traversed two furlongs of the mile journey. It still led approaching the straight entrance; the next call would indicate his fate.

“The leader has stopped to a walk,” the commentator shouted. “Several horses have swept past.”

That evening Jim returned to the Royal Oak and sat in the billiard-room. A mixed crew of local men and strangers were playing snooker. He noticed the stakes were higher than usual.  The strangers were well dressed and seemed well heeled with money. If he had even a few bob, he could join the school and maybe win good money – perhaps even the seven quid he needed so badly.
         
Suddenly, he needed more than anything else in the whole world, to feel in his hands the smooth stem of a billiard cue. If only he had even two bob for a stake.

Jim approached Harry Walton: “Have you got a coupla bob?”

“If I had two bob, I’d go for a trip round the world,” Harry answered ruefully.

Jim steeled himself to ask the marker, a big man formerly a champion footballer, for a loan. The marker declined politely. He’d long ago stopped lending money to unemployed customers. Jim felt ashamed, was sure all had noticed the soft-spoken rebuff. All he wanted was a couple of lousy shillings!

Suddenly, for no reason he could fathom, he recalled the night his father had taken the money from the jar on the kitchen dresser. His father had won that night!

Without deciding to do so, he was on his way home. Gerald was working, he told himself, a good job in the metal trades. And Gerry was paying in nearly all his wages. There might be money in the jar. He could play with it, win and return it – like his father had done years before. Jim told me afterwards that he was in a kind of trance. He walked softly down the side path and tiptoed on to the back verandah. The kitchen was in darkness. A strip of light showed under the living-room door.
Reaching the kitchen dresser, he struck a match. The sound seemed to be magnified. They would hear him inside…………………

He picked up the jar. It contained a few coins. He fumbled, trying to unscrew yhe lid. The match burned his fingers and he flung it aside. He opened the jar and poured the coins into the palm of his left hand.

At that moment, the living-room door opened and Gerald Roberts came through.

“Who’s there?” he called

“It’s me, Jim.”

Gerald was on his way to get some wood from the box under the table on the back verandah. He needed the kitchen light to see what he was doing. Completely unsuspicious, he threw the switch.

Jim stood immobile, the jar in one hand, the coins in the other.

Comprehending, Gerald gazed in unbelief.

i'm here spoon

Firstly,LTF, apologies for the misunderstanding.... now that I see...Isablackmantoo .

How do I gitsme one a dem personal avatars?

And how do I put a fancy pitcher on here?



Tx to TBas

nice to see Loggy

and the miserable old Mopey aka calimero , still stalking the halls aside the forum loooon, DA.

a good day to you too


Comprehending, Gerald gazed in unbelief.


“What are you doing?” he asked, not in anger but in shocked amazement.

“Just going to have a game of snooker,” was all Jim could think to say.

“With Mum’s money?” Gerald said. An anguished frown crossed his face.

“Hell, Jim, what are you thinking about!”

Jim replaced the coins in the jar and screwed the lid on. He was so ashamed he couldn’t speak.
Gerald seemed unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. He had always looked up to his brother. Jim had always been good to him, had always led him. Jim couldn’t do a thing like this……
“I’m workin’ and I can’t afford to play snooker,” Gerald found himself saying. Suddenly, he understood what had happened to Jim, and felt sorry for him. He took two shillings from his pocket, his last, and offered it to Jim. “Here. Here’s two bob. I know what it’s like to be out of work and broke all the time.”

Jim took the coin and walked across the verandah. He turned and looked at Gerald. He wanted to beg Gerry not to tell his mother.

Impulsively, Gerald stepped to Jim’s side and pressed his arm in the half light.

“I’ll never tell a soul, Jim. But you’ve got to wake up to yourself.”

Without replying, Jim turned and disappeared into the black night.

Back at the billiard-room he joined a two-shilling snooker pool. I can eat these mugs, he tried to tell himself as the marbles were being distributed, but his hands were trembling. He missed several easy shots. His superior skill kept him near the top of the pool until the red balls were disposed of, but shame plagued his mind and he could not concentrate. He managed to get on the pink and black with two other players. He needed both balls to win. Momentarily, the tense atmosphere of the game gripped him. He strove to concentrate on a long pot. The pink ball moved slowly into the jaw of the open pocket. It jammed, but fell in. But he had mulled the positioning of the white ball, leaving himself a difficult shot on the black. He cued carefully. The black ball went straight as an arrow into a centre pocket – but the white ball went just as straight in – off into a corner pocket.
His money and his chances of winning several pools gone, he went home. That night, shame kept him wakeful. In the days that followed, Gerald made no reference to the incident. Jim soon buried his self-contempt deep inside himself.

And worry about the discrepancy in the football club funds again seized his mind…………..




                                            *


Ten days in the jail hospital. X-rays of my stomach. The diagnosis supports the view of my own doctor years ago. I haven’t an ulcer but a recurrence of the former acidity and a tendency towards ulceration.

The spell at the hospital would have been restful and pleasant enough but for two drawbacks. I dared not work on the book in hospital for fear of detection, and was impatient to return to my cell where I could write in relative safety. And the hospital was “full of cats”, as the crims say; a large percentage of its staff were flaunting homosexuals. The prisoners call the head orderly” Mother Superior “. Several members of the staff appeared to object not at all to being called female names.
One of the most sordid and scandalous features of life here is the frightening incidence of homosexuality, real and incipient. As one prisoner (a safe cracker but quite an intelligent chap who sometimes helps me in the library) put it, the prisoners can be divided roughly into three categories. First offenders and “knockabout men” (semi-criminals who come here at infrequent intervals); hardened criminals; and, thirdly, “poofters” homosexuals. My own observations indicate that this is more over-simplification than mis-statement. The third category, my informant claimed, the poofters’ are of three varieties. Men imprisoned for sexual offences; hardened criminals and, less often, “knock-about men” who are sexually normal outside but turn homosexual inside when serving long sentences; and thirdly, effeminate types here for various crimes not resulting from sexual abnormality.

If decent citizens knew the revolting sexual abnormality practised in the jail they would tear down the jails and reform the prison system. When you add this vile nauseating feature of our prison life to the other excesses, you have a situation which could not be toleratedin any society claiming to be civilized.

Each cat has her female name: Amber, Maude, Rosie, The Alabama girl, Lana Turner and so on. Each has her favourite boy friends, who compete for her favours. They colour their hair with peroxide stolen from the hospital or with dye stolen from the mill where blankets are made. They borrow books from the library and use the colour off the covers for rouge and lipstick. They tend to congregate at one side of the exercise yard which has become known as “tailboard alley”.

Much has been written in recent years, especially in England, tending to condone homosexuality. I reject such reasoning; perhaps such people are more to be pitied than blamed, but they are mentally crooked and a symptom of the decay of a society. My reading indicates that rampant homosexuality was one sign presaging the fall of powerful states like the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany. Let proud England ponder on history. Let our own Australia beware that sexual abnormality is beginning to flourish.

Fortunately, cats are rare in “A” Division, among the first offenders.

I am glad to be back in my clean cell with Jim and the book.

“Yes, Mr Martin, right away. I’ll pay every account, right away.”

                                             

                                                *


We had an exciting diversion today. A prisoner climbed up the inside of a newly built chimney in the boiler shop. He stood precariously on the chimney top and attracted the attention of passers-by. Soon he was addressing a large crowd. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on the scene.
The story goes that he had been refused permission to see his lawyer. From his high vantage point, he shouted to the warders that he would not come down until his legal adviser was summoned.

While about it, he harangued the crowd outside about the prisoners’ manifold grievances. Apparently of a poetic turn of mind, he broke into rhyme at times to inform the people that “Rook, the cook, is a crook” and so on.

He remained on the chimney from early morning until darkness approached, in turn singing and waving to the people in the street below, abusing the warders, demanding to see his lawyer and detailing the many and varied short-comings of the jail.

At last, his lawyer came and persuaded him to come down. He is quite a hero here tonight but he will be punished severely.

An afternoon newspaper has been smuggled into the jail. It carries the story with photographs – but no reference to the grievances which the crim repeated all day.



                                             19



Jim Roberts and Harry Walton went to work with a will, gathering up elm leaves at piece rates. The firm who wanted the leaves supplied them with chaff bags. Jim told me he could not remember years afterwards how much per bag they were paid but they each earned five pounds in the first three days. Soon he’d have enough to pay the football club accounts and money to spare. Indeed, he and Harry hoped to make twenty pounds each before supplies of leaves ran out. To postpone that fatal day, they occasionally stuffed grass and limbs of hedges into the bottom of a bag under the elm leaves. They didn’t know what the firm wanted the elm leaves for- and they didn’t care.

When they met at the tram stop on the fourth morning, a Friday, Harry Walton handed Jim a newspaper.
“Have you seen this?” he asked glumly.

The newspaper announced that the government was investigating a German firm which was buying elm leaves. The article hinted that the government was considering ending the firm’s operations. On the tram, Jim and Harry discussed the press announcement. Arriving at their source of supply, they decided to gather no more leaves until the position was clarified. And they must take the bags of leaves to the city, and get their money before it was too late! They succeeded in borrowing a truck which they loaded high with full chaff bags. Harry Walton drove to the city while Jim sat on the back to watch that the load didn’t slip.

They entered a Flinders Lane warehouse. After some delay, they were granted an interview. The firm had temporarily ceased operation, they were told, but the position would be cleared up in a few days. Meanwhile they should continue to gather leaves.

“But what guarantee have we got that we’ll get paid if you go out of business?” Jim demanded frankly.

They would get paid they were assured.

“Well, we’ve got a truckload outside; pay us for that now.”

With some reluctance the accountant paid them five pounds each.

When the truck was unloaded they returned home debating the wisdom of continuing work. No use working their guts out on the off-chance of getting paid, they decided.

Within a week, the press announced that the firm had been close down. Either the leaves had been intended for manufacturing in Germany some valuable war material, Jim told me, or some ersatz product to compete with British goods on the world market. *

*This story seemed incredible to me but, after my release, I checked the newspaper files of the day and found that such a firm had existed.


Jim had five pounds. He insisted on giving Cissie one pound. With the balance he intended to pay the Melbourne Sports Depot account.

Lying awake that Friday night, he found his worry about the football club funds receding from his consciousness. He could pay only the most pressing accounts. Then he would be back where he started from, with some accounts still unpaid. Prospects for next day’s Flemington race meeting came into his mind.

In the frosty early hours, he crept from bed and lit the candle which stood on the window-sill. The candle was held in its improvised bottle-candlestick by newspaper by newspaper and hardened stalactites of wax. Shielding the candle with his left hand, he went to the living-room. There he found the racing papers where his father had left them on the old cane chair near the fireplace. Returning to bed he studied the fields, marking two horses in each race. Daylight was near before his labours were completed. He returned the papers, all but the one he had marked, to his father’s chair and went back to bed.

His heart beat pleasantly fast and a melody tinkled in the pit of his stomach. He would go to the Royal Oak again and win enough to pay all the football club accounts with money to spare. If he couldn’t get work, then he’d make money without working. If the world was against him, he’d fight the world on his own. If the world sought to prevent him getting an art course, he would win enough money to pay for one – and he’d win enough to get married, into the bargain.

He fell into a feverish sleep in which he dreamed that a bookmaker was giving him handfuls of money; afterwards someone asked him what he had won it on, and he answered in his dream “Ticino”.

When he awoke the late sun was peeping into the room. In its light he studied the form guide again. He hadn’t noticed Ticino’s name among the bottom weights in the first race – but there it was. The first horse he had ever backed. He looked up its recent performances and, though now an aged horse and contesting hurdle races, it had raced well in two starts since a spell.

horse and contesting hurdle races, it had raced well in two starts since a spell. 

Punters have often dreamed the winner of an important race, have actually seen in their dream the horses passing the post, the colours and saddle cloth number of the winner clearly visible.

Psychiatrists readily explain this phenomena. If a person fills his mind with the names, colours and numbers  of horses and gives over his being to the gambling habit, an occasional dream about horse-racing is a most natural result. Experience shows, however, that the punter usually dreams about a horse which he would have backed anyway, and that a dream horse rarely wins in a real-life race. A punter who dreams a loser tells no-one; a punter who dreams a winner tells everyone who will listen to him.

The clock dawdled for Jim that Saturday morning. He would not eat the stew his mother served for lunch, not only because he was tired of stew but because excitement had quite robbed him of his appetite. And he was excited because the decision to gamble the four pounds had crept on him unawares during the night. His dream about Ticino made the decision acceptable, confirmed it. Half an hour before the first race, he was on his way to the Royal Oak Hotel, clutching four one pound notes in his trouser pocket.

Why did he do it? Was it because he could not pay all the accounts, replace all the money, and so might still get into trouble? Because the urge to gamble was uncontrollable? Or because the fascination of gambling becomes uncontrollable when the consequences of failure are most dreadful? Jim told me that these were all part of his decision, but he reached it, he assured me, on the basis of the fantastic optimism of the gambler.

His mind was clear and his judgement cool as he walked into the billiard-room. Pittson, his usual nervous, predatory self, handed Jim the market for the first race, the list of prices which all SP bookmakers received from an illegal agency. In those days only the overnight prices were obtainable but, in more recent times a phone service is supplied twice between each race to every bookmaker who is prepared to pay for it.

Ticino was fifteen to one. I’ll back it each way and have a saver on the favourite, Jim reasoned,. Fifteen bob each way Ticino, and a quid on the favourite at two to one. If the favourite won and Ticino was unplaced he’d win ten shillings…. And if Ticino won……….. or even got a place …… He didn’t estimate the result and consequences if both ran unplaced.

He handed three pounds and nominated his bets. Pittson wrote the tickets with a trembling hand, gave Jim ten shillings change, and promptly reduced the price of Ticino to five to one. Jim met Harry Walton in the billiard-room and told him about his dream.

“Ticino and a saver on the favourite,” he concluded. “Go with me; I feel lucky.”

Harry Walton expressed his lack of confidence in dream horses, and backed the favourite only. Race time approached and, in a small back room where a new radio had been installed, the announcer described the line-up at the barrier.

“They’re off, now!”

Ticino was away well, lying fifth in the big field and the favourite was in front, out to lead all the way in the gruelling Flemington two mile hurdle course. Passing the judge’s box the first time, with one circuit to travel, the favourite had increased its lead to ten lengths  from the second horse and Ticino was a length back third.

“It looks like the favourite,” Jim said to Harry. “But old Ticino might get a place.”
Around the abattoirs side with five furlongs to go, Ticino moved into second place but the favourite was out fifteen lengths in front.

“With less than three furlongs to go and only one more hurdle to jump,” the announcer said

"the favourite.....

Around the abattoirs side with five furlongs to go, Ticino moved into second place but the favourite was out fifteen lengths in front.


“With less than three furlongs to go and only one more hurdle to jump,” the announcer said “the favourite seems to have the race all sewn up. But now old Ticino is closing on him a little….. They are approaching the last. The favourite lands safely over, two lengths clear…. But Ticino is not to be denied………”

“Neck and neck, stride by stride they go……….”

Excitement gripped Jim, excitement and a feeling of swaggering confidence. He had fined it down to two and they were fighting it out. He’d show them! “They’ve got it between ‘em,” he shouted in Harry Walton’s ear, but Harry was too busy riding the favourite to reply.

Ticino, the dream horse, got up and won by a neck. Jim grabbed his friend round the shoulder violently. “What’d I tell yer. Ticino and a saver on the favourite!”

“I’ve got as much luck as a bastard on Father’s Day,” Harry Walton moaned. He was a desperate gambler and a bad loser – that is to say, he showed his feelings when he lost; all gamblers are bad losers, but some hide their feelings. “If I’d backed Ticino they’d have finished the other way round.”

Jim was too excited to offer consolation.

Pittson’s hands shook even more than usual as he paid Jim just a fraction less than sixteen pounds ten shillings. Jim’s hands shook for a different reason. Complex feelings flooded his soul: relief, exaltation, self-confidence, and then the gambler’s premonition that a winning run was near, filled him with unparalleled expectancy. Nothing could compare with this expectancy, not the confidence that a woman can be successfully wooed, not the pleasant hunger before a well cooked meal, not the addict’s craving, nothing.

He would adhere to this method on each race: the favourite straight out, an outsider each way. He studied the paper with a calculated air as though confident that to select a winner, he merely had to analyse the form. He decided to double his stake and so invested two pounds on the favourite and thirty shillings each way on his chosen outsider.

The favourites won the next two races: and one of his each way bets ran third. Jim collected his bets. Pittson complained he was “having a fwightful day.” Jim threatened that he would “win that fousand” before the day was out.

Jim locked himself in one of the cubicles of the hotel lavatory and counted his money like a miser, smoothing out the crumpled notes, stacking the silver on the seat of the sewer. He checked the total three times: thirty five pounds. He thrust the money into his pocket and sat on the seat studying the form guide. Like all punters in the middle of what is known as a good trot, his mind was decisive. After studying the barrier position, weights and jockeys, he decided that Shadow King was a certainty. He returned to the billiard-room.

Harry Walton gave a mournful recital of his ill-luck and then asked for a loan of five pounds. Jim gave it to him without enthusiasm. Now Jim had more than once shared his last shilling with Harry Walton, and, indeed, Harry had often done the same with Jim. Jim loaned him the money as a matter of course – but he didn’t like lending money when he was in the middle of a run of luck. Most habitual gamblers follow that line of thought: if you lend a fellow punter who has gone broke some of your winnings, he borrows your good luck and you borrow his bad luck, or at least you run the risk of borrowing it.

Left with thirty pounds, Jim invested five pounds on the favourite at five to two and five pounds each way Shadow King at eight to one. Sitting near the billiard-room fire, caution came to him; he began to calculate the consequences of giving back his winnings. He felt that Harry had borrowed his confidence with the fiver. He could not explain away his caution. He must take home the money belonging to the football club before it was too late.

He arose and said to his friend: “I’m goin’ home for a minute. If the race comes on, ride Shadow King for me.”

“Don’t worry,” Harry Walton replied. “I’ll ride it home, all right. I’ve just put a quid each way on it.”

A bad sign that, Jim thought: Harry couldn’t get out of it on borrowed money. Shadow King can’t win.
At home, Jim hid seven pound notes under the mattress of his bed, sat by the fire in the living-room where his father and Gerald were spending their Saturday afternoon following the fortunes of their coupons.

He discussed the race results with them, and Gerald told him the quarter-time scores at the football. Jim discussed the football games with feigned enthusiasm, resisting all the time a compelling urge to tell them about his run of luck. Time enough to tell them and his mother if he finished well in front at the end of the day.

Presently, Tom Roberts, white-haired now and showing his age, said: “Well, I’d better get the crystal right. The next race’ll be on in three or four minutes.”

On his way back to the hotel, Jim felt hungry. He went into a shop and bought that staple luxury of the Australian worker, a hot meat pie and tomato sauce. Unless Harry had broken his luck, he thought, Shadow King would win – and then Pittson had better look out for his “fousand”. His confidence flagged and he loitered; let the race be over when he got back, and let someone tell him the result. Turning the corner, he saw Harry Walton standing outside the billiard-room. He approached to within thirty yards, then Harry saw him.

“Did it win?” Jim called out.

“No,” Harry answered and added as Jim came to his side, “No, it didn’t win, it mucked in by five lengths.”

They leapt with gamblers’ delight and hugged each other. When they backed horses together, especially when they each backed the same winner, their friendship became even more staunch.
Soon Jim Roberts collected his winnings of fifty pounds. Never in his wildest dreams had he really believed it possible. Fifty lovely bloody quid in one bet. Now the gambling mania gripped him like a steel clamp. He would show them! He’d play up his winnings and solve all his problems.

Two more races remained and he and Harry Walton began to study the second last race. Jim remained decisive; he remained steadfast in the choice he had made the night before. Harry Walton, an indecisive gambler, as usual, fined the field down to about six and, in lat minute confusion, backed two on sudden impulse. That was why he could truthfully say after nearly every race: “I intended backing that winner and went off it at the last minute.”

The favourite won the second last race and Jim had his saver on it, winning ten pounds on the event. He began to study the last race. He had marked the favourite as his only choice. Should he stick to it, have a lick at it, and not bother about any other horse in the race? He cogitated, seeking the inevitable result of the race.

Presently, Pittson approached him : “I’m losing a fortune,” he whined.

“Don’t cry. I haven’t got a handkerchief to lend yer,” Jim replied, and he couldn’t remember ever having spoken to anyone like that before. The money in his pocket and the feeling of power born of his success as a punter had given him a self-confidence bordering on arrogance.

“Well, anyhow,” Pittson answered, too worried to resent the insult, “give us your bets for the last now. You’re bettin’ too big for me. I’ll unload some of it with the bookie at the other pub.”

There were onlookers, all now aware of Jim’s phenomenal performance in backing five winners in a row.
“All right,” Jim said, rising to his feet with a sway of his shoulders that was to become a characteristic of his manner in later years. “I’ll have fifty quid on Beau Geste.  A hundred and fifty to fifty.”

i'm afraid for poor Jim, strikes me as a desperate

nice work jim ... a lot can handle the losing ... let's hope you can handle the winning 

Jim was as nervous and fussy as a cat.

pure literary genious at work

* genius
lol. is that better Bryce?

Hey TB, good to hear you can relate, hotel name mentioned later I think.

Don't bother moochin though, Mopey is the Number 1 ticket holder here

Hey Mopey, yes. That's much betterer

Glad you're appreciative  Mopey, just bear in mind, it seems I have only two followers

keep a lid on it brother [;)]





here to see a racehorse trainer seeking information about a horse to run at Moonee Valley races next day.    



I was struck with his appearance and personality. The jet black curly hair, still disobeying years of combing and oiling, flecked now with grey; the neat, well- cut sports coat accentuating the broad shoulders; the marked yet somehow inoffensive swagger of bearing; and above all the big blue eyes full of kindness, friendliness and pity – and of suffering too, as I came to know later. Slightly jarring notes were the bright yellow jumper, and the red bow tie which decorated the collar of his silk shirt, yet he wore them well, had the personality to subdue them.

Reinforced with Jim Roberts’s two shillings, the derelict breasted the bar and ordered a pot of beer.

“No more for you, Sam,” the barman said, not unkindly.

That was the signal for Sam really to perform as Jim would have put it. After announcing that he had paid for the rotten joint but hadn’t got delivery of it, he gave the barman the alternative of pulling him a drink or fighting him. In a matter of seconds and apparently out of the very wall, there appeared by the derelict’s side a huge black-coated man, replete with the flat nose and the slight roll on to the heels that characterize the punch-drunk ex-fighter.

“Come on!” he said, “You’ve had your last.” And with that, the drunk was grasped brutally, his arm driven up his back with quite unnecessary force.

Sam, the derelict, spun himself free, and shaped up helplessly. The chucker-out slapped Sam violently across the face with the back of his great hand. I was distressed and felt like intervening, but was afraid to. The drunk began waving his fists ineffectually and the chucker-out raised his hand to strike again.

At that precise moment, Jim Roberts, on his way back to the public bar, stepped between them.

“Hey!” he called out. “Fair go!”

The hotel employee, dangerously violent in the heat of the moment, turned savagely on Jim. Jim was five feet and ten inches, but the chucker-out was taller and much more powerfully built. Jim stood his ground, his hands clenched by his sides while his adversary weaved about in front of him, shaping to fight with instinctive, convulsive movements.

Every eye was on them and deep silence replaced the babble of talk.

“There’s no need to knock the old fellow about,” Jim said, gazing firmly at the man in front of him.

The ex-boxer relaxed a little, partly from caution born of Jim’s fearlessness and partly from knowledge that his employer would not support unnecessary violence in the bar.

“I got a job to do,” he said lamely.

“The old fella’s harmless,” Jim rejoined and turned to the derelict, taking him gently by the arm. “Come on, Sam, it’s past your bedtime the way you are.”

The bar relaxed as Jim led the old chap out the door. Acting on impulse, perhaps for the first time in my life, I excused myself to Trembath and followed them on to the footpath. I found Jim remonstrating with Sam on the street corner.

“Here’s half a quid – and see that you give it to your missus. I’ll ask her about it,” I heard him saying.

As Jim stepped back across the gutter and made to enter the public bar, I approached him and said: “Excuse me, but I want to thank you for preventing unnecessary violence.”
He looked at me quizzically as if surprised that I thought anything of the incident: “Old Sam’s a bit of a nuisance. A victim of the first war; but quite harmless if you handle him quietly. That chucker-out is too keen on throwing punches."

Embarrassed now and beginning to regret my impetuousness, I stood there feeling abject. Jim stepped briskly up the steps of the bar door. He hesitated and turned again to me, motivated, I believe now, more by some telepathic affinity between us than by sympathy for my embarrassment.

“Would you care for a drink?” he asked, simply.

“Well, yes,” I replied. “I’m with a friend but I could have one, yes………”


And in that simple manner began a friendship which was to prove fateful to both of us.

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