I Own the Racecourse! (2 page)

Andy Hoddel stood on the pavement in Blunt Street and watched his friends taking turns on a skateboard. The street went plunging downhill into a deep hollow and rose steeply again beyond it. On this side of the street, the pavement ran down under high blank walls; on the opposite side, a row of quaint old cottages tipped downhill with the street. The cottages were clumsy and ugly, squashed together in terraces, and each with a tiny square of front garden. To make up for their sameness and their squat, narrow ugliness they were all painted different colours: sooty blue, grimy green, pink fading to yellow, white turning grey. They all wore television antennae like crazy parasols on their roofs.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the criss-crossed, up-and-down streets of Appington Hill were very quiet. Still, the boys had to time their runs carefully, watching for the cars that came tipping suddenly out of side-streets. Each in turn, the boys went swooping downhill like birds, the wheels of the skateboard singing on the asphalt. Near the bottom of the hill, Wattle Road cut across Blunt Street in a longer, easier slope to the left. Sometimes the skateboard would swing away down this slope; sometimes it would plunge straight on into the hollow, past the entrance to Beecham Park Trotting Course, and mount a little way up the opposite rise. No one knew which it would do. Even the rider hardly knew until he had started his run, with the wind in his ears and the board vibrating under his feet, whether he would lean a little to the right and resist the curve or lean a little to the left and slip into it. Those at the top of the hill would watch expectantly until the moment passed; and every time, whether the board turned and disappeared or went straight on, Andy Hoddel would laugh excitedly. That was his share of the game.

Mike and Terry O'Day owned the skateboard, having made it from a bit of board and an old roller-skate. They stood together on the pavement and watched its performance critically—two stern, long-nosed faces, two pairs of narrowed brown eyes, two heads of red-brown hair. Terry's head was a little lower than Mike's, for Terry was eleven and Mike twelve.

‘A bit too long in the back,' said Terry. ‘I told you before.'

‘You're off your rocker,' declared Mike.

‘Half an inch too much behind the back wheels. She'll tip up backwards one of these days.'

‘That'll be the day.'

There was no heat in this argument but Joe Mooney knew it could go on, flat and unyielding, for hours. There hadn't seemed to be anything wrong with the skateboard when he was riding it, but he watched it anxiously on its way down the hill. ‘Maybe she's a
shade
long in the back.'

‘She'll do,' said Terry, changing sides at once to agree with Mike. The O'Day boys never allowed anyone else into their private arguments.

Andy, leaning against a brick wall that was scaly with dirt and age, had listened to the argument as he listened to all his friends' discussions. A frangipani tree leaning over the wall threw a patch of shade on the pavement, and a stray dog had crept into the shade at Andy's feet. He stirred its ginger hair with his toe, and the dog thumped the pavement with its stumpy tail.

Matt Pasan had finished his ride and was climbing the hill with the board tucked under his arm. The others watched him come slowly up, past the high blank walls and closed ticket windows of the trotting course, pausing to allow a car to pass before he crossed Wattle Road, then coming on up the steepest part of the rise. He was out of breath and his hair clung to his damp forehead in the heat of early summer, but he shouted cheerfully in spite of it.

‘Right to Ma Willock's gate—like to see you beat that.'

‘Like to see 'em beat that!' shouted Andy suddenly. ‘Eh, Matt?'

The others looked at him with the patience of long habit, neither forced nor polite. They were used to Andy and accepted him.

‘Your turn this time, Andy,' called Matt, teasing. ‘Come on, have a go!'

Andy laughed uneasily, waiting to see what they expected of him.

‘Turn it up, Pasan!' called Joe quickly. ‘He's having you on, Andy. There's too many cars.'

Andy laughed again, this time with relief. ‘You can't fool me, Matt Pasan!' he called. ‘I wouldn't ride that thing. It's too long in the back.' He smiled warmly at all his friends and leaned back against the wall, out of their way.

Matt came up, his dark, lively face bent over the skateboard while he felt its wheels, testing their firmness. Joe watched seriously. His thin, long-jawed face was often serious. Joe was as tall as Mike O'Day, and the same age. Matt, like Terry, was a year younger. With their eyes fixed on the skateboard, none of them noticed a grey police van coast silently to the kerb behind them. They jumped a little, and stared at their feet, when the constable's stern voice reached them.

‘All right, you boys,' said Constable Grace from the window of the van. ‘Get that board off the streets. We've got enough accidents to worry about without you asking for more. Get going, now; and if I catch you again I'll be having a word with your dads.'

Reluctantly, the boys stirred. Terry muttered, ‘My go next time,' and tucked the board under his arm. They trailed off slowly across the street towards the ugly little cottages. Only Andy stayed where he was and looked bewildered.

‘What's up?' he called after them. ‘We aren't hurting, are we? What's up with
him
?' he frowned at Constable Grace and called again. ‘Joe! Where you going? You wasn't doing no harm!'

Joe paused in the middle of the street and waited. ‘Come on, Andy. We got to go.'

A black storm came over Andy's face. He shouted at the constable. ‘They wasn't doing no harm!' His mouth seemed too small and slow to make the words come fast enough. ‘Matt—Terry—Joe—wasn't doing no harm! You're a big
urger
. That's what you are.'

Joe and Mike had gone back and taken Andy's arms. ‘Put a sock in it, boy,' they muttered urgently. ‘It's all right, we don't mind. Come on. It's
all right,
I tell you.

‘Urger!' shouted Andy, craning back at the constable as he was led away. ‘Great big urger!
Urger!
' The constable waited passively. He had opened the door of the van and was ready to hold up any traffic that might suddenly appear in the narrow street.

‘Will you
come on
?' said Mike, exasperated. ‘You'll end up getting the lot of us in bad with the cops.'

‘He's a great big urger, that's what he is,' Andy explained indignantly. ‘You wasn't doing no harm.'

‘It's for our own good,' Joe soothed him. ‘He doesn't want us getting knocked off by cars, that's all. We're going to have a look at the joss house now.'

Andy frowned, muttered, and was silent. They hurried him round the nearest corner and out of the constable's sight. There Joe and Mike dropped Andy's arms and looked at each other, breathing deeply. Terry was frowning; he hated to be made to look foolish. Matt said ‘Whew!' and suddenly exploded into chuckles.

‘The big urger!' he gasped.

In a minute they were all giggling and looking at Andy with a sort of admiration. Andy's black scowl faded. He grinned too, and began to swagger a little. When the others went on he dropped contentedly behind them and followed. His eyes, which were round and very blue, were as placid as usual. His face, which was round too, was as warm and friendly as usual. At the back of his head, where the crown was, his fair hair stuck up in little spikes that would never lie flat.

Andy was almost as tall as Mike and Joe, and a little heavier. From the time the boys were very small, so long ago that even Joe and Mike could hardly remember, they had all played together in their narrow back yards and in the lanes and streets of Appington Hill. In those days they were all the same as each other, or as nearly the same as five different boys can be; and in those days Andy was the one everyone wanted to play with. It was Andy who invented the best games, who would always lend his ball or his bike, who was always so glad to see people that it was fun just to meet him. When there were fights it was Mike or Terry who started them, Joe who fretted about them, Matt who was hurt and astonished by them, and Andy who patched them up. It was Joe who watched and worried over the two smaller boys, but Andy who made them feel wanted in the game. In other ways, Andy was the same as the other four. They all started school at nearly the same time, and they were all the same. Then something happened. Somehow, little by little, a window seemed to close on Andy. Now he went to a separate school and they all knew, even Andy himself, that he was different.

Andy lived behind a closed window. When he smiled his warm smile and spoke a little too loudly, it was as if he was speaking through the glass. When he listened carefully to what people said and paused for a second before he answered, it was as though their words came to him through the glass. Sometimes when he was with other people his face wore a patient, waiting look as if he didn't know they were there. Sometimes he walked by himself with bright eyes and a ready smile, as if he didn't realize that the other people had gone. He had moments of noisy laughter or fierce anger when it seemed that he was knocking against the window. Even his face looked a little distorted, as things sometimes look through glass. Still, because he was Andy, always warm and admiring, always glad to see them and careful not to be a nuisance, the others were still his friends.

Andy and Matt lived in the same row of squashed cottages, all joined together, with front doors opening straight on to the street. When they sat in their front rooms watching television, only a yard of space and a brick wall separated them from the people walking by on the pavement. Their street ran into the one where Joe lived in a house that stood by itself, squat and important. It had bulging front windows, and there were garlands of plaster fruits and flowers decorating its outer walls. Farther along this street there was a terrace of tall, well-shaped cottages with grilles of delicate iron lace across their upper balconies. The O'Day boys lived in one of these. Their back yards, hidden behind high fences of palings or rusty corrugated iron, opened into a narrow lane. The boys turned into this lane so that Terry could push the skateboard through the O'Days' back gate. Then they went on, through steep streets and narrow lanes, towards the waterfront where the Chinese joss house was tucked away.

‘Not worth it, really,' Mike pointed out. ‘Even if you climb up the fence, what can you see? A couple of old houses, one dragon and a lantern or two. We've seen all that. I'd rather poke about in the timber-yards near the water.'

‘Do that too, why not?' said Joe. ‘It's not much further.'

‘I'll charge you to go in,' said Matt with a grin. ‘I own the timber-yards.'

This was part of a game they had played continuously for a long time. Once it had been half serious; now it had become a habit.

‘You do? I thought that was Terry's?'

‘I bought it off him one day a couple of weeks back. Didn't I, Terry?'

‘For a measly eight thousand,' Terry grumbled. ‘I should've charged you more.'

‘Have you spent the eight thousand yet?' Mike asked him. ‘Sell you the Public Library for it.'

‘No, it's too far away—you hardly ever see it. I'll look around for a bit, I reckon.'

‘I own the Port Jackson Steamship Company,' said Joe suddenly. He added, ‘That gives me all their ferries.'

There was a respectful silence. No one had thought of claiming the Steamship Company before, though they ‘owned' all the most valuable parts of Sydney between them. The usual way to acquire property these days was to buy or swap for it from each other; but Joe had discovered a new claim, and could take it up free. It was a good one, too.

‘Swap you the timber-yards for it,' said Matt.

‘Swap you the Town Hall,' said Terry.

Joe smiled a little, pleased with his new property. ‘No, thanks, I reckon I'll stick to the ferries for a bit.'

From behind came a hopeful voice. ‘I own Stebbins' shop. Matt! Hey, Mike! I own Stebbins' shop.'

‘You can't,' Joe explained patiently over his shoulder. ‘Old Tom Stebbin owns that.' Andy could never understand this game, however hard he tried. No one could make him see that you couldn't simply claim something that belonged to someone else. It had to be public property; or owned by so many people that you couldn't know who they were, so that they might as well not exist. You couldn't simply pinch his shop from old Tom Stebbin.

Andy tried again. ‘I own the police station!'

They broke into laughter, remembering Constable Grace.

‘Good on you, Andy!'

‘That's it, boy, you show 'em!'

‘The police station—that'll come in handy!'

The lonely, shut-in look closed over Andy's face. He had lost contact with his friends again. At the next corner he slipped quietly away. It was some time before the others noticed, and when they did they were not very surprised.