

### THE SECOND OF THREE

Lindsay Boyd

Published by Changeling at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lindsay Boyd

**Cover by Vila Design** http://www.viladesign.net

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Part One: Life as a Blond

Part Two: The Second of Three

Part Three: The Day of the Lizard

Epilogue: Unmasking

About the author

Other titles by Lindsay Boyd

Connect with Lindsay Boyd

**Part One: Life as a Blond**

Let me live like a skyrocket. Let me colour the night sky for an instant with all my being and then burn out.

Yukio Mishima _The Boy Who Wrote Poetry_

It is, as someone once said, so difficult to reclaim that feeling from childhood. Once lost, once a person has reached adulthood, it appears to have been lost forever, never to be truly recovered. All that can be hoped for is an approximation, and this usually only for an instant, of that extraordinary sense of eternal youth and of a life without limits.

This nearness might conceivably arise from a visit to the scenes of one's youth, although who would be so bold as to deny that such places can never be the same after a person has discarded their childhood shoes for all time. The child of yore has, literally, grown so much taller, has experienced widely through the intervening years, and may stand dumbfounded within and outside the buildings frequented in the past. Photos of oneself as a youngster are often false leads mired in a struggle to recognise the faces staring back.

For me, for a return to that childhood atmosphere to be in any way complete, it must come into play on a different level. For instance, whenever I encounter a smell from the time I am transported back to my infancy. I surmount all obstacles and become a child once again. The same can occur with equal efficacy simply by conjuring a smell from the past on an imaginative level. For example, the distinctive aroma I associated with my grandfather, or the pleasantly sweet leathery tinge of my father's aftershave lotion.

In music or a song lies an even more powerful means to this end. Music, with its dreamlike quality, was the great revelation of my childhood; my safe haven in fractious hours, it cut straight to the heart and sometimes the soul as well. I began tapping my feet to rhythms from a young age. Posterity has captured an instance of me as a months-old babe perched on the ground with one ear cocked. In all likelihood I am listening out for and taking enjoyment in some tune or other.

How breathtaking the birthday morning when I breakfasted at the kitchen table, dressed for school as usual, and found a compact, battery operated radio among my presents. No gift could have pleased me more and with what pleasure I switched on the set and turning the little black dial at the side located snatches of music amongst the static. In a moment, I settled on a frequency airing a current hit, a bright, breezy popular tune. I marvelled at the clarity of the sound until I could afford to dally no more.

For many years after this a radio would sit on the night table positioned between my bed and the one my younger sibling slept in. I made a habit of reaching for it in the period immediately following lights out. I would hold it close to either ear, trip the knob and search until I encountered blissful melodies.

Certain songs that I loved as a child remain deeply embedded and underscore the periods when they featured in the soundtrack of my life. Now, many years after I initially heard it, a re-listening to Roberta Flack's unrivalled love song 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' calls up the warmth, bright sunshine and clear blue skies with which for me it was synonymous.

I loosely recall such a day near the end of one school term, a day of hot sunshine that cascaded unobstructed from the bright blue dome above. I passed several hours in the late morning and early afternoon in the company of a friend living in Beaumaris. Returning home, I broke the rail journey at Bonbeach and swam for half an hour in the bay. Back at the station, the hair on my scalp still damp after the pleasant exertion, I sought a place in the shade, transcendent warmth coursing through my gangly limbs.

On another day I might have silently if not all too seriously begrudged the wait for the next southbound train. But that afternoon such thoughts were non-existent. I would have lingered endlessly without a gripe. It must have been then that I made out the refrain, though I could not say where the source lay. Perhaps the stationmaster's office diagonally opposite, or maybe another passenger had switched on a radio in the nearby tin roof shelter that served as a waiting area.

The music, a haunting combination of acoustic guitar, piano, cymbals and strings, bewitched. As did the female voice and the words she articulated with precision. I sat absolutely still, absorbed. I felt I could have plucked out of the air the eternal joy she was singing of. There is no better way for me to reprise the vital lost essence of childhood than by closing my eyes when I happen upon such songs again.

***

I entered the world around eight o'clock in the evening on the first Saturday in May 1958. It is easy to visualise my father at the time, a man just turned thirty-one, bespectacled and with a high forehead, biding his time in the maternity wing of the local community hospital. The epitome of a spouse with a wife undergoing labour, his eyes perform a ceaseless dance.

But this is no typical expectant male parent, unversed in what my mother is enduring as I prepare to abandon her womb head first. His job as an ambulance officer has brought him into contact with women experiencing labour pains. He has even played the midwife. He could be with my mother. He ought to be, he might be thinking. But such is not the modus operandi in the late 1950s in a quasi-rural settlement to the south of the metropolis of Melbourne.

Therefore he has to endure this time lag. At one stage he rises only to think better of it and immediately resume his seat. Newspapers have fascinated this man, an ex-paper boy, all his life. So he reaches for the obvious, a copy of a daily evening broadsheet lying on a stand among a swathe of reading miscellany. He scans the bold lettering introducing a piece on one of the sporting pages: 'Can United grab glory three months after Munich?' Tom has just replaced the paper when a smiling nurse enters the room.

"Mr Boyd, you've a son!"

Tickled pink, Tom follows the nurse out of the room and visits with his wife and second son for a short time. The fair hair of the infant reminds him of his late older brother Jim. Returning home he takes a seat in the living room and extends his legs their full length. Fifteen-month-old Marty, my older brother, lies fast asleep in a bedroom in another part of the house. The new father of two brings the day's _Sporting Globe_ to his lap and opens it at the pages detailing the afternoon's race results. The gathering of a half-empty bottle of beer and the topping up of a glass completes the ceremony. He raises it to eye level and toasts the new arrival.

"Nine pounds thirteen ounces, you little ripper!"

In the background a wireless is tuned to a broadcast of the Manchester United / Bolton Wanderers FA Cup Final. But Tom, having no interest in soccer, hardly listens. The publicity the Manchester United team – the obvious sentimental favourites – has garnered in recent months has washed over him. His loyalty and love lies with one football code and one team only.

In point of fact, the memory of the many friends and fellow players who perished in an airplane disaster in Munich earlier in the year will not be sufficient to inspire this Manchester United outfit to victory. The game culminates in a 2 – 0 triumph to Bolton Wanderers, a scoreline my father does not hear, having dozed off in his chair.

My inordinate birth weight, as Mum would often tell me, stemmed not from chubbiness but rather length as measured from head to toe. But though I tipped the scales at a fraction under ten pounds, the crown of weightiest _bairn_ born in Frankston's community hospital that day went to the progeny of an Italian woman. Considering the natural advantage his, or her, race conferred, in later years I accepted the thought of the silver medallion with good grace.

Notwithstanding his absence at the moment I first cried out, my father's breath lit on me from the get-go. Among other things, I inherited or would shortly inherit the pallid Boyd skin, their freckles (if less than my older brother and many of my red-haired cousins), his ear for music and his love for the Geelong Football Club. Had my arrival in the world occurred as recently as three months earlier I would have welcomed the light in the provincial city by Corio Bay rather than at the gateway to the Mornington Peninsula.

Arguably, it was from Tom too that I inherited something else that would rear its head in years to come – an unintentionally fierce default expression that rubbed some up the wrong way and that others interpreted as an ingrained angry or disaffected streak. The price I would pay on both accounts would in time prove considerable.

In the late fifties approximately 20,000 people called Frankston home. Twenty-five miles separated the settlement from the centre of the city of Melbourne, an appreciable distance in those days though the rail journey had shortened by a half hour when the line was electrified in 1922. On clear days the skyline of the big smoke's central business district was visible from the town beach. But not until the 1980s would Frankston be incorporated in Greater Melbourne.

Literally and figuratively we lay at the end of the line. Beyond, single-carriage diesel trains plied the routes to Stony Point and Mornington. The move away from Geelong, birthplace not only of both my parents but also Marty, was prompted by Dad's promotion in his job as an ambulance officer. He successfully applied for the rank of station officer with the Peninsula Ambulance Service, taking up the position in March of the year of my birth.

I owed my first given name and perhaps my flaxen hair as well to Jim, christened James Owen, the uncle I would never meet. Jim's snow-white locks ensured he stood out everywhere, my father told us. Leaving aside what this might be interpreted as saying about the lines of communication extant in the family I chose to grow up in, not until my early to mid-teens did I realise the name by which I had always been called – Lindsay – was in fact my proper middle name. I discovered with a shock that I was Owen Lindsay, not, as I had believed until then, Lindsay Owen.

This echoed a lingering confusion with respect to names on Dad's side of the family. Incredibly, his own middle name of Alexander was misspelled Alexandra on his birth certificate. To add insult to injury, the date of his birth was rendered incorrectly. In addition, Tom would mention years later that no one in the family ever cleared up the mystery of the exact spelling of the first name of the second of his two older brothers, Laurie.

I would not retain Jim's snowy-headed appearance for long, but the nickname my father bestowed – Snowball – held. Just the first of many nicknames bandied about over the years, it served to bring back those early days and my entry into the world as a blond. Manifold baby snaps and a tiny lock of silky soft hair Mum snipped and afterwards retained in an envelope corroborated my life as the fairest of blonds.

***

Our two-child family has travelled to the Oakleigh home of Bob and May, Mum's parents. The afternoon sun shines bright and the three generations we comprise are enjoying the day in the backyard. My grandfather's crown of hair, whiter even than my own, fascinates me while I sit on the grass, smiling contentedly. I am still grinning when Marty hovers near, watering can in hand. Poppa lifts me high in his arms. Nana stands next to us. Beside her, Mum holds Marty aloft. The blithe pleasure in the fact of existence is unqualified.

It may have been then, or on a similar afternoon, that someone noticed the way my hair gleamed in the sunshine, leading to the souveniring. In my carefree innocence, I know nothing of the place I have been born into, let alone its unsavoury aspects, such as air disasters with the capacity to almost wipe out renowned football teams in one fell swoop or any other allegedly newsworthy occurrences – foremost amongst them at the time France's headaches in their North African colonies.

My blissful ignorance continued for a long time. Only gradually would it dawn on me that taking one's place in the human race in the twentieth century, a hundred year span of unsurpassed turmoil and almost non-stop minor and major strife in numerous corners of the globe, meant being tossed into a witches' well. Till then, I could bask in much that felt good, as in a cocoon.

Drawn to the physical world, I liked nothing better than to sit on the front porch of our rented weatherboard at 19 Cambridge Street whenever the summer sun bathed the wooden steps. Tracing patterns in the loose earth and stones with my sandals, I loved the feel of the warm air as it kissed my fair hair and skin. Now and then I bent at the waist and ran my fingers through the earth, all but unaware of the muted sounds of voices, televisions and radios in the background.

Reconciliation to another of the great natural elements, water, eluded me for a while. I took umbrage when Mum first introduced me to the concept of a shower. In due course, however, I would never look back. On Dad's side of the family there existed a clear-cut link with water. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a great grandmother was born at sea, somewhere in the Roaring Forties many nautical miles south of Madagascar, during her parents' assisted passage from Liverpool, England to Point Henry, Geelong.

Sixty years later, my great uncle Manus, purportedly motivated by a wish to maintain proximity to a fellow who owed him money, joined the Australian Infantry and journeyed to the Gallipoli battlefield. Wounded in the conflict, he died on board the hospital ship, later to be buried in the sea off those blood-spattered coasts. What the sea yielded in Johanna Lucy Mary Elizabeth Wilde, it took back in the form of my young great uncle. Consciously or not, I paid homage befitting whenever I bathed in the ocean.

Television was not without its fascination and in tandem with my brothers, I passed many a late afternoon / early evening glued to the aptly named idiot box, a recent arrival to the shores of our remote island continent. For the greater part of the time it was American sit-coms such as _Get Smart_ , _Gilligan's Island_ and _McHale's Navy_ that kept us enthralled. The antics of CONTROL Agent 86 in the former, in particular, often had me in stitches. Who needed chaos (KAOS) with him in CONTROL?!

We dressed appropriate to the season, light tops and short pyjamas in summer, long pyjamas and dressing gowns in winter. Whatever the time of year, we tended to draw our lower limbs up until we sprawled half-seated, half-lying on our chairs. Though our knees could point in contrary directions, in many ways our poses complemented, right down to the hands held loose against the sides of the face as we fixed our attention wholly on the magical screen.

I never felt more warm, snug and safe than of an evening when Mum came to bid my younger brother Chris and I goodnight. Usually, she stole into our bedroom shortly after lights out and taking hold of Chris' toes played 'Little Piggy' with him. Then, she crossed to my bed, repeating the rhyme for my benefit. Prone to ticklishness, sometimes the mere touch of her hand on my foot alone tempted laughter.

Wiggling each of my four small toes in turn, she intoned, "This little piggy went to market! This little piggy stayed home! This little piggy had roast beef! This little piggy had a bone!" So cosseted, the world could never be unremittingly bleak. Even when, one by one, my brothers and I reached school age, we rested safe in the knowledge that Mum would see us off in the mornings and welcome us home of an afternoon.

Our pale green weatherboard featured a garden plot at the front and a constricted driveway at the side. Little distinguished it in terms of size and structure from any of the other dwellings on what was a quiet residential neighbourhood. Twenty-five yards or thereabouts from where we lived, Cambridge Street intersected a wider, busier thoroughfare. The bus stop where we embarked for school of a morning, satchels riding on our hips, Mum's kisses fresh on our cheeks, lay just round this corner.

My formation in music continued at school. The singing of nursery rhymes and children's campfire songs was a regular feature, our teacher waving her hands about like an orchestra conductor at the front of the room in a bid to manage our cacophony of high-pitched voices.

On certain mornings a third of us sang _The kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,_ another third _Merry, merry king of the bush is he,_ and the remainder _Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be_ at one and the same time. Though enamoured of music, I drew the line at enforced singing. Nonetheless, I made a token effort at participation and found something amusing in the collective din.

Gratifying too were many of the moments shared with my brothers. We understood each other so well that at times words were unnecessary. When we employed it, the language we used frequently comprised our variant, something another person would not have penetrated with ease. It was not uncommon for Chris and I to remain awake beyond lights out and the familiar farewell from Mum. We liked to blather in undertones about this, that and the other until sleep skirted ever nearer and proved impossible to stymie.

***

Darker forces infiltrated the light by degrees, in barely perceptible increments. Days prior to Mark's death, the two of us found a nook in the, to our youthful eyes, vast playground area and thumbed marbles, a fad that swept the school in much the same way that mind numbing yo-yo would do in a later grade.

Then came the morning when my classmates and I assembled at our desks, preparatory to commencing the day's lessons. Several of us noticed Mark's absence. I deemed it odd, given there had been no indication of a burgeoning illness, or anything else that might have justified this non-appearance. We lapsed into silence when Miss Connelly, a young, blonde-haired woman with a fair complexion, stood and faced us. It took her several moments to speak, as if she did not quite know how to voice what she wished to say.

"Mark was killed in an accident after school yesterday." As the story went, he was riding his bicycle near where he lived when a car struck and killed him instantly. I heard the news with stupefaction. Even at my tender age, I may already have gained a modicum of insight into the netherworld known as death, but I felt consternation before the fact that it could claim a friend with such impunity.

On the home front, the uneasy relations between Mum and Dad became patently obvious. One morning in the mid-sixties my brothers and I, clad in our school uniforms, ate breakfast with little appetite at the kitchen table. The absence of our usual gusto was attributable to the argument raging in another part of the house. The voices could be heard clearly. After toying with my food for a few moments, I pushed the plate away, leaving a half eaten piece of toast. The fracas ended with Dad's abrupt departure for work.

Several minutes later – I was about to leave the house with Marty and Chris – I noticed Mum sitting at the kitchen table, her open palms shielding her eyes. Barely making a sound, I adjusted the satchel on my shoulder and tiptoed into the room. I stood next to the table, watching her. She drew her hands away from her face and smiled at me through her tears. She continued to weep when we embraced.

Whenever Mum and Dad brandished arms I hoped against hope that as the day or evening wore on they would become friends again, that purloined happiness would be regained and that we would henceforth resume as a family. I could not rightly understand what they were fighting for or why they could not get on.

Alas, the bitterness left a strain that usually lurked for hours. That Mum was fed up to the hilt in this instance became obvious when we returned home. Her eyes red-rimmed, she kissed each of us in turn. She appeared every bit as upset and out of sorts as when we had left for school that morning.

"Get changed as quick as you can. Will you do that for me?"

Perplexed though unquestioning, we went off to our bedrooms and did as asked. As soon as we were ready, she ushered us out the front door. She had packed a suitcase, but aside from that we took nothing else with us on our peremptory flight. Mum's agitation became keener in the central business district as we quickly did the rounds of the real estate agencies located on the strip north of the main intersection, notable for its three public bars on three corners. A post office broke the monotony on the fourth.

Trailing along with her, struggling to keep up, we guessed well enough her objective: the finding of a place where we might live separate from Dad. I admired her grit, but for better or worse the attempt foundered, as one so off-the-cuff was perhaps bound to do. With nothing suitable on offer at the estate agencies, she resigned herself to the inevitable and we retreated.

Increasing cognisance of things outside myself enabled me to gain a new perspective on death. I had almost forgotten my friend Mark's when the ninth summer of my life began. Despite regular Sunday family outings, undertaken in Dad's old Holden, journeys to the centre of Melbourne were still rare enough to be regarded as a treat. Mum and Dad planned a trip in the lead-up to Christmas that year and successfully petitioned that we be allowed to miss school on the chosen day.

My animation preceding any outing provided the foretaste of the love of travelling that would later dawn. But this budding Marco Polo would not acquire a dependable sense of direction without a struggle. Travelling by train in years to come, I sometimes became convinced we were going in the direction opposite to what we should have been. Usually I did not have the nous to change seats and face the other way, action that would have led me to realise my folly.

Our pre-Christmas trip coincided with an excursion and picnic destined to take my third grade classmates to a park further down the Mornington Peninsula. Exhilaration greeted Sister Benedict's announcement that casual clothes could be worn instead of the regular uniform. The day before, Sister opined that it was a shame I would have to miss out because of the family junket. Yet she surmised that I would enjoy myself in the company of my parents and brothers.

I knew I would. Sitting in the back seat of the Holden with Marty and Chris while Dad accelerated into the heart of the city along St Kilda road, I gazed in awe at the pedestrians on the footpaths, the greenery of the gardens across the tramlines, the large city buildings and the multi-coloured Christmas decorations.

Dad pulled into a parking space in a street off St Kilda Road. We covered the remaining distance by tram and spent the next few hours wandering around department stores and partaking of cafeteria food and other delicacies such as ice cream. The fiesta ended in the mid to late afternoon. Juggling purchases, we returned to Flinders Street and boarded a southbound tram.

From one perspective a far from festive spirit infused this holiday season. Earlier that month, on Monday, December 12, the Victorian State Executive Council had declared that Ronald Joseph Ryan, a prisoner convicted of shooting and killing a warder while escaping from Melbourne's Pentridge Jail, would go to the gallows on January 9 in the New Year.

The week after our city trip, two days before Christmas, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal for a stay of execution. Other pleas and stays of execution followed until the date of the hanging was categorically fixed for Friday, the 3rd of February. The day before – a late summer scorcher – I was at home with Mum and my brothers when Dad returned from work at his usual time.

Among the items he brought from his briefcase was a copy of the Melbourne evening broadsheet the _Herald_. He placed it on the kitchen table. I gleaned the headline on the front page. The bold print read 'Ryan Hangs Tomorrow.' The sordid details were set in a smaller typeface and a picture of the condemned accompanied the story.

It was the standard mug shot of Ryan that had appeared so often in the press of late. A thin-lipped man with slick back, vaguely untidy hair, there was an unmistakable toughness in the visage. But, to me, he looked far from the devil incarnate. Studying the photo, I could only conclude he must have done something extremely bad to merit the fate lying in store.

Two days after the execution we set off on our regular Sunday drive. Normally a relaxed, happy few hours, this time the atmosphere was heavy. Many had shared our disquiet over the weeks. Large numbers of the citizenry had been galvanised and protested the treatment of Ryan up until 8 o'clock the previous Friday morning, the time of the execution. We were appalled still at what had occurred at D Division within the bluestone-walled jail in inner city Coburg and the key part politicking played in the state's perpetration of the cold-blooded murder of one of its own.

The radio often played on these Sunday drives. Though lacking Dad's natural affinity for music, Mum sometimes sang along to a tune she liked. On that sad Sunday, the strains of a maudlin tearjerker filled the air and she harmonised on cue. Somehow its narrative of human love tragically sundered by death seemed apposite given what had unfolded. I pictured Joe Ryan as the classic underdog, one I would have stood alongside had I been able to. His guilt or otherwise hardly mattered. As a human being, he had deserved better.

Those overlooked, or cast off, never escaped my notice for long. Nor the petty motivations at play. My fourth year at primary school had been underway about three weeks when I gathered with a group of friends in the middle of the playground early one morning. Boys and girls from all the grades milled around, waiting for the day's classes to begin.

By the fence, a matter of yards away, stood another boy from our class. He gazed about him with a forlorn expression, hands buried in the pockets of a pair of ragged trousers. The threadbare nature of his entire uniform – shirt, tie, jumper, shoes, trousers and socks – set him apart.

One of our group nodded in his direction, prompting the rest of us to turn our heads. The object of our scrutiny had joined our ranks the day before. No one knew why he had begun the year late, but in any case he remained a stranger. As far as I knew there had been no attempt on anyone's part to assuage his obvious discomfort. A bell sounded and off we trudged to the classrooms. Some of my friends walked with their arms draped about each other.

The largest building in the school, a brick structure of two levels, housed the classrooms of the fourth, fifth and six graders. The broad downstairs foyer served them, and the third graders, as a surrogate recreational area during our morning recess and lunch periods on days of inclement weather. Persistent rain kept us within its ambit during morning recess on this day.

I entered the foyer through a door on the right-hand side and did not at first take in the new boy hovering near the base of the stairs. I went, as a matter of course, toward the group of friends I had been with earlier in the day. They were at the other end of the foyer, near the main doors. But I changed direction when I caught sight of the newcomer.

His lonely attitude resembled the one we had seen him in before school. When I inquired, he told me his name was Greg. Moments later I exchanged glances with my friends, several of whom were staring questioningly in my direction. But I stayed put and opened the paper wrapper containing my morning snack, or play lunch as we referred to it.

Mum invariably supplied my brothers and me with a snack for morning recess, as did the mothers of most everyone who attended the school. Those boys and girls who did not come with something readymade usually brought sufficient loose change to make a purchase at the Tuck Shop. Greg had arrived that day with nothing to eat and no means with which to procure anything. So, I handed him some of the biscuits Mum had prepared for me.

***

Grandiloquent gestures of any kind, verbal or non-verbal, were not inherent to my nature. But though I had little to say for myself, I meant what I said. On an afternoon that we made the long journey to Preston, located the other side of Melbourne, to visit my vivacious aunt – my mother's older sister – and her husband, I felt moved to express my feelings toward my big, gentle-natured uncle.

At one stage during the day, I wandered into a sparsely furnished room. On a table in one of the corners sat a typewriter and some reams of paper. After a moment's thought, finding myself alone, I inserted the topmost sheet in the machine and with the index finger of my right hand tapped out the following: Uncle Jack is a good bloke. When discovered, the brief missive provoked the typical reaction such a note would coming from a young child.

Not knowing any better at this stage of life, I never stopped to consider that other people might, some of the time at least, be less true to their words than I reckoned myself to be. I would have been alarmed had someone with more experience hazarded this as a possibility. It was not that I wished to chisel the world to my design, pleasant as such a prospect may be. I simply took it as a given that people were as good as what they said. A boy as literal minded as myself was begging for trouble.

One morning I quizzed Dad as to the reason why he went to work every day and listened incredulous to his reply that the wolf had to be kept from the door. It was several days before I felt secure enough to venture anywhere near the door, or my beloved front porch, for fear of the ravenous hound itching for a chance to leap. My relief was great when the threat did not materialise and I understood that the beast he had referred to was the figurative one of Lady Poverty.

Minor deceptions struck with the force of a stinging betrayal, such as the time a classmate welshed on a bet we made about the result of a Geelong / Carlton football match. Early in the week following the Saturday game, it became clear he had not the slightest intention of paying what he owed. Though crestfallen, I did not pursue the issue. Even had I then known of Uncle Manus's extraordinary action during World War One it is unlikely I would have emulated him and gone to similar lengths for the sake of a mere ten cents half a century later.

Another time at school, I was minding my own business in the playground at lunchtime, near the wire back fence closest to the third grade classroom, incognizant of the fact that a number of my classmates were at loggerheads in the middle of the grounds. Half of them had staked a claim by the front fence while the rest had sought the sanctuary of the steps at the side of the main building. From their stations, the members of the two parties gawked at one another mistrustfully.

Of course schisms were not uncommon. Something of the kind occurred almost daily. As a rule, however, the rifts healed before long and the erstwhile buddies let bygones be bygones. But while they lasted they could be bitter. I assumed that this breach was among the more rancorous when I caught sight of Peter, a tall, slim built boy, standing close to the fence as though maintaining watch. Ignoring my greeting, he grasped my arm and shoulder and marched me over to his cohorts by the steps.

Dismayed at this manhandling, I deduced something of what must have occurred when I beheld the other group – the one to which I 'belonged' – on the other side of the playground. I endured several minutes' detainment before being allowed to cross the asphalt and join them. To judge by the expressions on my mates' faces, I had turned deathly pale.

I leaned against the front fence and stared at our adversaries. One of them found the sight of my despondency so hilarious that he kept pointing at me and quivering with laughter. Slowly but surely my stoic mask peeled away, adding further to the already considerable amusement of the clown across the yard.

The mask collapsed repeatedly in the months and years ahead. But I would pay for my literal mindedness like never before on a grey, drizzly public holiday during the last year I spent at primary school. Chris and I joined several of my classmates on a hike in the vicinity of Frankston High School, the grounds of which dominated one corner of an intersection a short ramble from the Cambridge Street weatherboard that we had by then recently shifted out of.

That afternoon we came to some vacant land surrounded by a low fence sadly in need of repair. The day's never-ending drizzle had dampened our hair, shoes and socks. The mud we plodded through compounded our dishevelment. Those of us who had not thought to bring raincoats received an even more thorough dousing.

We ignored a 'Private Property / Trespassers Prosecuted' sign affixed to the fence and one by one mounted the obstacle and proceeded. But the sight of three older boys approaching from the opposite direction stopped us in our tracks. Predictably, they were quick to assert their age superiority. One of them gripped my collar and the others seized two of my companions.

The one holding me insisted he was the son of the man who owned this parcel of land and that we would be in big trouble once he heard of our misdemeanour. The others broke free and retreated to safety, leaving me to deal with the consequences alone, in the hands of a tormentor relishing the situation. The quips of my friends that the bogey father was in all probability no more than 'a dunny man' did not comfort an iota. Seeing no reason to doubt his word, I howled and screamed with anguish as he led me away.

He released me seconds later and casually wandered off with his mates. That morning Mum had made a point of warning Chris and me not to return home filthy. The chastisement she brought down on us the instant we arrived at the front doorstep, our shoes and lower parts caked in mud, came as no surprise. But after what I had been through an hour or so before, it was like salt applied to an acutely sore wound.

The tortuous day ended. Yet even then I could not rest easy. The thought of the following twenty-four hours never let up. I fixed a wistful gaze on the world at breakfast and a short time later entered the school grounds with grave reservations. No sooner did I pass through the gate than I picked out some classmates amid the throng.

Abashed, gamely trying to appear as if the humiliation of the day before had not cut me to the quick, I met the furtive glances and smiles. The incident had taken wing and become common knowledge, as I had anticipated it would; it was perfectly natural that those who had stood by as witnesses would enlighten all and sundry as eagerly as a news anchor breaking news. Eyes lowered, I crossed to the main building. When I returned to Mum's good books and next experienced her affection of a night, I felt infinite gratitude.

***

Mounting evidence to the contrary did not sway me; I still clung to the hope that those I dealt with on a day-to-day basis could be taken at their word. Yet there were instances when veracity was a bitter pill. During my fourth year at primary school, in lieu of the usual round of classes, one particular day featured a gala that had been much talked about in preceding weeks.

Each grade took turns to appear before the attendees, a mishmash of teachers, family and friends. The architect of our presentation, none other than our hefty mistress Sister Benedict, insisted we appear in white, the boys in white shorts and t-shirts, the girls in white dresses. Lacking a pair of the said shorts, I mentioned my need to Mum and Dad more than once. But for a reason unknown to me they demurred and a last minute plea fell on deaf ears; I would have to front up in the grey pair of shorts I ordinarily slipped on as part of my uniform.

While the second graders diverted the crowd, my classmates and I huddled at the base of the steps by the main building. I, alone among the boys, wore a grey pair of shorts. My worst fears were confirmed when one of the others, a skinny, hollow-cheeked youth, looked me up and down. "You'll spoil us."

A round of applause sounded at the conclusion of the second graders' performance. They quickly surrendered the stage. At a signal from Sister Benedict, we advanced to the centre of the playground and mounted the platform specially assembled, forming three rows, the second slightly higher than the first, the third marginally higher still. I took a position in the front row. Acutely conscious of the colour disparity, my eyes dropped to my shorts for a moment before lifting to the audience.

This was not the only time at primary school that I experienced the mortifying dread of appearing different, even if I could see the amusing side of some of these incidents. One cold, miserable winter morning Dad idled the engine of the Holden in our driveway as he waited to chauffeur us to school, a fail-safe we had recourse to on days of foul weather. Rushing to join Marty and Chris in the trusty vehicle, I omitted to exchange my slippers for shoes.

Minutes later, Dad pulled up near a pedestrian crossing on the street running by the side of the grounds. I made for the gate with my brothers but almost literally tripped on my oversight before advancing more than a yard. Humbly, I turned and retraced my steps. Fortunately for me, Dad had not driven away.

Wardrobe sensitivity also came to the fore in the year when, together with my then classmates, I was considered old enough to serve on the altar at mass. Marty had reached this point himself twelve months before and so I knew what lay ahead many weeks prior to the announcement that Father Woodcock, the assistant priest at the time, would sound us out on the matter at the close of mass one day.

"Let us pray," said the priest, breaking the post communion silence. The congregation stood and he continued, in a strong, clear voice. "We thank Thee, Almighty Father, who through Thy Son, Jesus Christ, has instituted this Holy Communion, to our consolation and bliss. We pray Thee: Give us grace so to commemorate Jesus on earth, that we may be partakers in Thy great communion in heaven."

"Amen."

"The Lord be with you."

"And also with you."

"May almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

"Amen."

"The mass is ended. Go in peace."

"Thanks be to God."

Father Woodcock stepped to the centre of the platform, two young assistants either side of him, and genuflected before passing the altar rails on the left and entering the presbytery. My classmates and I sat and watched the boys and girls from the other grades file out of the church. I discerned one or two whispered remarks in the silence. Father Woodcock, having exchanged his chasuble for an outfit uniformly black except for the white collar, reappeared from the presbytery and loped toward us, a smile on his ruddy chops.

"Thank you for staying behind. I'd like to find out how many boys are interested in serving on the altar. All of you will have a good idea what an altar boy's duties consist of. Some of you have older brothers who've been privileged to serve." He paused. "Despite what you may have heard from them, or others ... " Nervous laughter filled the gap. " ... despite what you may have heard, an altar boy has nothing to be frightened of!"

There was more edgy laughter. "The job is simple. After some practise sessions you'll assist Father Kealy or me at mass. All being well, you'll serve on a rostered basis, perhaps once every week or two weeks, depending on the number of boys available." He paused again before continuing. "I won't take up anymore of your time than necessary. Let's have a show of hands. Those boys interested in coming to the first practise session please raise your hands."

Between six and a dozen of my classmates lifted their hands. The paucity surprised Father Woodcock. "So few? What about you other boys? Wouldn't you like to serve on the altar?"

During the awkward silence that followed I looked away from the priest, glancing back at him a moment later. Father Woodcock's dark eyes resting on mine compelled me to speak. "I don't have the clothes, Father."

"Oh. I see. Don't you have an older brother?"

"Yes, but he was never an altar boy."

***

As nerve-racking as moments like these could be for one so hypersensitive, any loss of face experienced did not come near that felt in the aftermath of uncalled-for humiliations. At school I often showed no interest in the games of my classmates. If ever someone paused long enough to ask why I was not joining in the laughing and gallivanting, I smiled or shrugged, not knowing what to answer and leaving my interlocutor none the wiser.

I never set out to hurt anyone in my immediate environs. On the contrary, I made every effort to enter into harmonious relations with those who crossed my path. If this proved impossible I did my utmost to stay out of the way of the person concerned. I was not blind to the existence of a type of embittered individual hell-bent on making the lives of others a misery. But on the whole I was well liked. Given this, incidents in which I became involved from time to time were difficult to understand.

The nuns who taught at the school resided in a convent adjoining the grounds. Beside that stood Masonic Hall, the venue for a wide range of functions, including some held under the auspices of the school. One afternoon at the conclusion of classes I arrived at the bus stop out front of the building and began waiting for the next eastbound service.

Among the others killing time was an amiable girl from my class by the name of Patricia and a boy from one of the higher grades with whom I had never had any contact. Out of the blue he grabbed my tie and pulled hard. Patricia rushed to my aid and eventually he backed away. I adjusted my tie and collar, wondering what in the world could have prompted his action.

It took little to shred the self-confidence of one such as me. Nonetheless, when I did stand up for myself another 'I' emerged. A Protestant primary school sat opposite our Catholic establishment and behind it lay Beauty Park, a large expanse of greenery. A row of buildings, including those at the rear of the Protestant school, bound it on one side, roads on two other sides. Thick undergrowth formed the periphery on the other.

It was a good place to repair of a lunchtime for a game of football, even if we had to make do with a tennis ball rather than the usual oval shaped pigskin. We improvised goal posts with two jumpers positioned yards apart at either end of the playing space.

Early one afternoon the contest became more willing than usual. Anthony, a classmate, and I competed fiercely for the ball when it rolled loose near one of the goals. I won out, kicking the ball between the two jumpers and scoring a goal for my team. This sealed our victory, one that my teammates and I celebrated with claps on the backs. Anthony stalked off hands on hips, shaking his head. The owners of the jumpers retrieved their garments and off we went.

But the emotions the game had ignited could not be laid to rest so easily. Drinking water from a tap out front of the school toilet block, I felt a hard blow on my back. I went in pursuit of the perpetrator, catching Anthony as he was about to enter the toilet. We grappled with one another, drawing a crowd. In the meantime, someone left the scene intent on hailing Marty.

The fight ended before he appeared. I overcame Anthony with ease and threatened him with a repeat dose when he accosted one of my allies. He thought better of it. But far from being elated at my show of strength, I felt wretched. As the high drama abated and we prepared to begin the afternoon's classes, I shed tears.

The nuns who lived at the convent were our teachers in all but two or three of the grades. The stresses of their religious vocations must have been immense. They neither smiled nor appeared in any way light of heart. The bespectacled Sister Benedict, our third grade mistress, proved the perfect case in point. She taught us for the duration in one of the two classrooms right of the main building, compact weatherboard structures painted a sickly light green. Her mien alternated between critical and pained.

The years had not been kind to her. She shuffled or waddled about the front of the room, a gait that was perhaps the legacy of arthritis or some other indeterminate physical ailment. Though not a big woman by any means, she radiated an air of physical threat reminiscent of a gargantuan woman smelling of analgesic cream who my parents sometimes called on to mind Marty, Chris and I. I failed to see feminine or motherly attributes in any of the nuns.

Yet I found some things to like in Sister Benedict's classroom. She had a habit of putting on music for our delectation, or as a means to keep us out of mischief, when one at a time we presented her our work for correction. Like the blond of the recent past, I tapped my feet to the rhythms. I also developed no less an appreciation for lyrics. When the Australian popular music group The Seekers sang of sorrow free worlds of one's own making diffused with peace of mind the appeal was instantaneous.

The pronunciation of new words often left me bamboozled, but I had a penchant for spelling and demonstrated my ability whenever Sister set the scene for a spelling bee. I gave a good account of myself in these contests and may even have trumped the opposition once or twice. On an afternoon when the competition boiled down to myself and another boy, my opponent succumbed to a fit of the giggles that spread round the room. Sister admonished our lack of decorum with a few choice phrases.

Early in term three she set us an exercise before regaining her place at the front of the room. One after the other, we completed the task and dropped our pens in their nooks. Sister Benedict swayed back and forth across the room. Stopping before the window nearest the door, she peered out at the playground. She turned back to us and her eyes fell on me at precisely the moment I finished writing. She motioned for me to come forward.

"See that rubbish?" she said, taking me by the right arm and indicating some scraps on the ground outside. "Pick it up and put it in the bin." There was a large industrial container in the middle of the grounds, near some steps. Believing she did not mean this bin, I deposited the refuse in the smaller receptacle directly outside. I re-entered the room.

"Is it done?"

"Yes, Sister."

"Did you take the rubbish to the bin?"

"I put it in the bin outside."

Furious, she began flaying me with her fists and knuckles, an attack carried out to the accompaniment of a frantic, near hysterical voice. "You weren't to put it in that bin! I meant the other one! Can't you do anything right!?"

She dragged me cowering out the door and down the steps. I could hear myself whimpering. "Pick up _that_ bin!" I took hold of the bin near the classroom. Sister Benedict then dragged me, by the hair, ears and arms in turn, toward the industrial container. All the while she berated me for my ineptitude and inability to carry out a straightforward instruction.

***

So much for my wish to be on good terms with everyone, teachers and fellow students alike. Conflict embroiled me anyway. Physical and emotional attacks such as these sewed a deep resentment and mistrust of authority figures and, indeed, anyone who tried to dominate, whatever the circumstances. The solitary saving grace was that I emerged with a smidgen of self-worth intact.

Such harassment also fashioned a terror of being singled out, something I believed liable to happen if I fell short in my efforts. From time to time this could not be helped and to cope with the fall-out I sometimes resorted to extreme measures.

Miss Duffy, one of the teachers in the middle grades, was an attractive woman with a head of abundant auburn hair. She provided a lush contrast to the dowdy nuns and enjoyed great popularity as a result. While she shepherded our class through multiplication tables one day, I sat with my right hand cupped beneath my chin, approximately halfway along the row nearest the door.

"... five sixes are thirty. Six sixes are thirty-six. Seven sixes are forty-two. Eight sixes are forty-eight. Nine sixes are fifty-four. Ten sixes are sixty. Eleven sixes are sixty-six. Twelve sixes are seventy-two."

A bell signalled the end of the day's classes. But Miss Duffy ignored it and encouraged us to continue. "One times seven is seven. Two sevens are fourteen. Three sevens are twenty-one. Four sevens are twenty-eight. Five sevens are thirty-five. Six sevens are forty-two. Seven sevens are forty-nine. Eight sevens are fifty-six. Nine sevens are sixty-three. Ten sevens are seventy. Eleven sevens are seventy-seven. Twelve sevens are eighty-four."

Miss Duffy brought her hands together. "Very good. Lindsay and Craig, I'd like to see you before you leave."

I had placed the things I did not intend to take home in my desk and picked up my satchel. Apprehensive, I waited on her as the others dispersed. She wanted me to do some additional work. But I suspected there was something more to this when her eyes held on mine for several seconds after she handed me the assigned task and received my assurance that I would complete it as bid.

Once outdoors I went round the side of the building, past the toilet block and straight over to the burner near the back fence, blind to the fact that Craig was watching me from a distance of several yards, per the instructions Miss Duffy must have laid down after I departed the room.

I opened the burner door, reached into my satchel for the pages of remedial work and flung them on the dying embers. Without delay, I closed the door and practically jogged away. My heart leapt in my throat at the sight of Craig observing my every move stone-faced.

Be that as it may I regained my equilibrium fast and passing by him did not deign another glance his way; one part of me held this teacher's lackey in contempt. I continued to the gate giving access to the street. Well, I had done what Miss Duffy had plainly expected and perhaps even wished for. Otherwise, why bother to send her flunky to spy on me?

As victimised as I felt, on the bus home I was wracked with anxiety at the thought of how the teacher might react the following day. There was no way I would be able to escape the result of my action. This was not like the time I prevaricated out front of a neighbour's house on Cambridge Street and spying six empty milk bottles in a wooden container attached to their fence wilfully tossed them on their lawn until someone inside rapped on the window in remonstrance.

I could take to my heels in such instances. Were an elder to venture pursuit it would be simple to outrun him or her, or so I reckoned. In so doing, I could avoid the repercussions. Not so at school, where we dealt with teachers endowed with razor sharp memories when it came to our indiscretions. The night after I incinerated Miss Duffy's extra homework I behaved as I always did when I returned home beset with guilt, whether or not I had a clear idea as to where exactly my crime lay.

Never one to confide in others at the drop of a hat, I would take my place at the dinner table, more reticent than usual, and afterwards join everyone in the living room. There I would lose myself in television until bedtime, either ranged on a seat or full length on the carpet, hands under my chin, a matter of feet from the screen. If a musical programme featured among the listings, I watched with heightened intensity.

At times like these, music, which provided unmatched enjoyment in any circumstances, truly was my sole refuge. Fearful lest I never again have the opportunity to enjoy it in the same way, I listened like I had never listened before. Surely I was experiencing the vaguest intimation of what the condemned man must feel hours ahead of his appointment with the executioner.

Another day in a later year, I returned home obsessed with thoughts of the presumed ire of the school headmistress Sister Matthew. A television special featuring The Seekers screened that night. It felt like my valediction to life as I had known it up to then. The programme showcased all the group's songs that I knew and revered and closed, fittingly enough from my point of view, with 'The Carnival Is Over', the illustrious quartet's signature tune.

Musing on the ephemeral joys of not only love but also everything good and worthwhile in this world, I bought as much time as I could between the programme's conclusion and bedding down, knowing that as soon as I slipped beneath the sheets and let go this day I would bring the morning – and with it my destiny – much closer. When I could forestall the moment no longer, I spent minutes staring into the darkness, listening to Chris's steady breathing across from me.

Ironically enough, the moments about which I nursed gut-wrenching qualms generally passed without anything untoward happening. The expected thunder and lightning never eventuated. For the first few minutes of the next day's class I dared not meet the eyes of the teacher crossed, but once that purgatory passed I breathed easier. Why then had I tied myself up in knots? Were the teachers not out to skin me – us – alive? Were my 'sins', in actual fact, mere trifles when surveyed in the cold, hard light of day?

***

Much seemed grounded in fear, sin and concomitant guilt. To quote Dad from a memoir he wrote around the commencement of his eighth decade: "Two things I did like at school were the choir and religious education. The former because I obviously had a good ear and a good voice and was starting to develop a love of music ... the only distinction I ever received at school was for Christian Doctrine. I regret, however, that it was a religion taught on fear. I remember that at the time I had countless nightmares about the tortures awaiting the sinner in hell, if one should happen to fall by the wayside."

Though unacquainted with nightmares depicting apocalyptic afterlife persecution, I understood exactly what he meant. My religion-engendered fear rose to the fore on the school days reserved for confession. We trooped in small numbers to the parish church and sat squirming in the pews. Each and every one of us writhed even more when his turn to shut himself away with the priest came. But this seemed a small price to pay for the relief gained. Temporary though any reduction in the weight of our sins may have been.

To say the local parish church was not the most aesthetically pleasing building in the world, either outside or within, would be vintage understatement. A broad porch marked the front entrance. Four doors, two in the centre and one to either side, accessed the interior. The rows of seats facing the altar were in four sections. Those closest to the sides provided room for a handful of parishioners while those in between seated a good many more. The central aisle was around twice the width of the aisles to the right and left.

At the front, on the right-hand side, were many more rows of seats. These faced the altar at a ninety-degree angle. Directly opposite, on the other side of the altar, an enclosed area served mothers and families with rambunctious infants. Those sequestered here could be seen but not heard by the rest of the congregation. I could not recall the choir stall above this section ever being used for the purpose. Music was a rarity in our parish.

Stations of the cross lined both sides of the church. Panes of stained glass indented the walls at regular intervals. Behind the seats to the right of the altar there was nothing but stained glass. The daylight that fell upon them delineated an assortment of Catholic symbols. Right of the altar were two large doors that gave on to a stairway. To the left an opening led to the presbytery.

The parish priest, his nameplate above the door, heard confession in a cubicle near the head of the left-hand side row of seats. On the other side of the church was the assistant priest's booth. No matter how understated one's tread on entering this house of worship, it was impossible to move with subtlety on the notoriously creaky wooden floor. This proved a thorn in the side of latecomers for Sunday mass and also those confessors who desired to make a clean breast of their recent failings without drawing undue attention to themselves.

The noise grated more than ever when I entered the church with an especially onerous load to rid myself of. It had dogged me since I committed a particular misdeed for the first time. My classmates and I stopped outside the assistant priest's confessional and eased our way into the pews flanking it.

The one among us wishing to unburden himself first – or desperate to have the ordeal over and done with – went straight into the confessional on seeing that the 'Assistant Priest' sign above the door was not illuminated, meaning that no one was currently having their confession heard.

Several minutes later, the remaining five of us were still to appear before Father Woodcock. We had spent time on our knees but soon thought better of that, unable to endure for long the desperate hardness of the kneelers. Directly, the light behind the assistant priest's sign went out and the lad who had been in the confessional appeared. He dropped to his knees in one of the rows in front of us. One of my other classmates took his place. The light came on again and the door closed soundlessly in his wake. Silence at the death!

***

Next in line, as if my knees had not borne enough already, I lowered myself anew, bowed my head, joined my hands and shut my eyes. I retained this pose for several seconds before glancing at the sign. The light went out, the door opened and the boy ahead of me left the cramped space. Entering without delay, I dropped to my knees and made out Father Woodcock's profile on the other side of a lattice.

I averted my eyes from the high forehead topped with short, dark curly hair and clasped my hands tight. I commenced in a faint voice. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is one month since my last confession, Father, and these are the sins for which I am guilty. Lying, stealing and ... I was impure, Father."

"In what way were you impure?"

"I swam with no clothes on, Father."

"Where did you do this?"

"At the beach, Father."

"At the beach?"

"Yes. I swam out to deep water and then took off my bathers, Father."

"Did anyone see you?"

"No, Father."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Father."

"In that case I don't think it's so serious. Is there anything else you have to tell me?"

"No, Father."

"For penance I want you to say two Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. Now, a good act of contrition."

"Oh my God, I am very sorry that I have sinned against Thee, because Thou art so good and with Thy help I will not sin again." During my recitation, the priest absolved me of my sins in a whisper. I left the confessional and knelt beside those who had gone before me, silently uttering the penance ordained.

Having been convinced beforehand of the heinousness of my sin, I was charged with a sense of absolution greater than that usually felt post confession. I had feared that the priest I divulged my 'impurity' to, whether Father Woodcock or Father Kealy, would froth at the mouth when I revealed what I had done on a public beach in broad daylight, regardless of the distance preserved from onlookers. Instead, Father Woodcock had listened with surprising matter-of-factness.

***

Our parish priest may have been a less lenient confessor or viewed the matter in a less worldly light. His Sunday services were an experience not soon forgotten, especially on the part of those who arrived so late that in their haste they omitted to brush the tips of their fingers in the marble font containing holy water in the entranceway before crossing the threshold and confronting Father Kealy's unparalleled, if oft unspoken, bile.

Parishioners of long standing knew that if by the forty-five minute mark of the allotted hour the parish priest had still to commence the Eucharist rite, the service would run a good deal longer than the median sixty minutes. As a rule, the freezing in winter, boiling in summer church filled to near capacity for the main Sunday morning service, with young and old alike festooned in their finest casual wear.

A hot, steamy Sunday in summer stands out. The indications of restlessness and boredom were more pronounced than ever. From the pew I shared with Mum, Dad, Chris, Marty and a couple of other parishioners, I stared at a point near the altar, at the same time absorbing isolated outbreaks of coughing, crying and a welter of other sounds.

Father Kealy, young assistants either side of him, doggedly pressed on. He showed no inclination to speed up; the lateness of the hour was neither here nor there. Coughing racked his chest for seconds on end until he recovered sufficiently to carry on in the same dirge. "Holy, holy, holy Lord ... God of power and might ... Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest."

Making an enormous hullabaloo, the congregation dropped to their knees. I followed suit, my gaze coming to rest on the backs of the parishioners kneeling in the pew in front of us. The Eucharistic prayer Father Kealy began reciting was the first and longest of the four commonly in use at the time.

Coughing, both on the part of members of the congregation and the priest himself, the squeals of babies – those not exiled in the nook left of the altar – and innumerable displays of unrest of one kind or another in every section of the church, punctuated the reading. But the celebrant proceeded in his inimitable style.

"Let us proclaim ... the mystery of faith," said Father Kealy, adjusting his glasses and beginning the Memorial Acclamation.

"Christ has died ... Christ is risen ... Christ will come again."

The Doxology followed. "Through Him ... with Him ... in Him ... in the unity of the Holy Spirit ... all glory and honour is yours, Almighty Father ... forever and ever."

"Amen."

On their feet again, many of the flock rubbed life back into their knees. Commencing the communion rite, Father Kealy then adopted a singsong drawl. "Let us pray ... with confidence to the Father ... in the words our Saviour gave us."

The congregation joined in. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass us against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Father Kealy went on alone: "Deliver us Lord from every evil ... and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy ... keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety ... as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ."

"For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever."

"Lord Jesus Christ ... you said to your apostles ... I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins ... but on the faith of your church ... and grant us peace and unity of your kingdom ... where you live forever and ever."

"Amen."

There followed another pause, interrupted by other random sounds from the body of the church. "The Peace of the Lord be with you always."

"And also with you."

The altar boys covered the rails with the lengths of white cloth attached to their undersides. Father Kealy broke a host over a paten and placed a small piece in a chalice. He proclaimed in a very low voice. "May this mingling ... of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ ... bring eternal life to us who receive it."

"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace."

We dropped to our knees again and watched the priest finish breaking the host. "Lord Jesus Christ ... Son of the Living God ... by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit ... your death brought life to the world. By your holy body and blood ... free me from all my sins and from every evil. Keep me faithful to your teaching ... and never let me be parted from you."

Again, noise in the vicinity sidetracked me. Father Kealy, apparently deaf to it, continued. "This is the lamb of God ... who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper."

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

"May the body of Christ ... bring me to everlasting life." Father Kealy reverently ate the host and then picked up the chalice. "May the blood of Christ ... bring me to everlasting life."

The priest solemnly drank from the chalice. Then, turning to the tabernacle behind him, he brought forth another cup. It was with the greatest difficulty that he went down the steps toward the altar rails, cup in hand. Many of the attendees at once left their places and converged on the altar. They advanced along the three aisles and from the two sides. In a short time, the railings were crammed with communicants. Those unable to immediately find room stood back and waited.

Father Kealy proceeded to the side nearest the presbytery entrance and began distributing communion. An altar boy shadowing him held a plate under the chin of each person who received the sacrament. After accepting the host, the parishioners stood and began walking back to their seats, their faces as devoid of expression as when they had advanced to the altar. Those waiting then knelt at the rails.

At our pew, we exchanged the discomfort of the kneelers for the almost equally excruciating seats. Dad threw a glance at the rest of us, his signal that it was an opportune time to partake of the symbolic body of Christ. We stood as one, stepped on to the aisle and joined the line that had formed. But advancing more than a few inches at a time was impossible in the crowd. The people who edged into the line from the seats closer to the front further impeded our progress.

Left hand clasped around my right wrist, I held back to allow a woman to merge into the line. Finally, with Mum and Dad slightly ahead of me, Marty and Chris to the rear, I made my way round to the railing directly in front of the seating on the right. I recognised one of the boys kneeling at the altar rail as a classmate of Marty's. Father Kealy and the altar boy stopped in front of him.

"The Body ... of Christ." The boy made no response. "The Body ... of Christ." Still the boy did not respond. Losing patience, Father Kealy tried another way. "Put ... out ... your ... tongue!" Alas, the stentorian command was to no avail. The boy pulled a face. "Put ... out ... your ... tongue!" The boy made the same face for a while longer before opening his mouth and extending his tongue.

Father Kealy had begun working his way back toward the centre of the church and was two or three parishioners away from me when he emptied the cup. I watched him go back up the altar steps. His young assistant held his position. By now, the atmosphere on the sultry morning had become oppressively close. To my left, a man in his thirties collapsed with a thud that reverberated far and wide. Four male parishioners, including Dad, rushed to his aid, hauling him outside via the doorway on the right.

Father Woodcock appeared and with the assistance of the second altar boy began distributing the host to those round to the left. I eyed a huge crucifix situated high on the wall behind the altar. This figure of Jesus Christ, with the crown of thorns and the piercings in the hands, feet and sides, never failed to strike me as lifelike in an uncanny way. But a close inspection revealed a spookily dead and decayed entity, not a Christ out of which the life has just ebbed, bound in a few short hours for glorious resurrection.

I focussed on nearby images of Joseph and the Virgin Mary as Father Kealy put the empty cup down and brought another from the tabernacle. When good and ready, he targeted the steps once more. I tilted my head so that the altar boy could bring the plate under my chin.

Father Kealy drew a host from the cup. "The Body ... of Christ."

"Amen."

Eyes closed, I accepted the thin wafer. Moments later, hands joined in front of my lower abdomen, I stood and began walking away. I deftly avoided the pool of vomit staining the floor near where the man had keeled over. I returned to our pew close on the heels of Mum, Marty and Chris. We knelt and settled. Straight after this, Dad reappeared and the last of the communicants dribbled back to their seats.

The mass had run well over an hour. Several members of the congregation, their Sunday schedules thrown out of whack, took advantage of the post-Eucharist quiescence and went on their way. The doors at the rear of the church shut with a bang when let go. Fed up, the precipitate leave-takers to a man departed in this manner, as if desiring to make a statement.

The parish priest looked up in the same moment that two more parishioners exited via the middle doors at the back. Again, they were so put out, or cared so little what anyone else thought, that they let the unwieldy wooden doors slam behind them. Father Kealy interrupted his post-communion ritual, put down the cup he was cleaning, joined his hands and glared coldly. Father Woodcock and the altar boys stood unmoving beside him. The silence lasted the best part of a minute.

"I ... will ... wait!" Another long period of complete silence followed. "I ... will ... wait ... until those parishioners ... who intend to leave ... have gone!" Perhaps dreading the thought of the spotlight, no one else had the effrontery to bail out. The priests and the altar boys went on with their work and the marathon ground to a finish several minutes later.

***

During fifth grade, together with some classmates, I would see another side of our parish priest. Sister Patricia sat correcting work at the front of the classroom, leaving us to undertake revision for an exam. There was a knock on the door and everyone stood for Father Kealy. He moved, as always, as if he suffered from chronic arthritis in the hip.

"Sister. I ... need ... three ... boys." I was one of the three Sister Patricia chose. Glad of a respite from the daily grind, we accompanied him to an upstairs office on Wells Street in the centre of town. Our task was a simple one, the carrying of several boxes down a flight of steps. In the space of two trips up and down we managed to bring everything. We then stacked the entire load in the boot of his stately black vehicle. Before taking his leave of us back at the school, Father Kealy dug deep in the right pocket of his trousers and handed us each a ten-cent coin for our trouble.

***

My love for the Geelong Football Club, as passionate in its way as that of my parents', gelled during my tenth year. Dad obtained tickets for the four weeks of the Victorian Football League final series in 1967. So, on four consecutive Saturdays at the end of the season, we occupied the same seats in the packed southern stand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and watched our beloved navy blue and whites do battle.

The last quarter of the Grand Final had not long been underway when the football was swept to the Richmond forward line. However, their team's full forward made an ungainly fumble, allowing the Geelong defenders to clear the ball. "You're a bloody old woman, Guinane!" yelled Dad.

The Geelong supporters within earshot took much pleasure in this disparagement. I glanced at Dad before turning back to the play. The cuthroat contest continued. Neither team gave an inch. Trailing by ten points late in the game, Geelong made a desperate forward thrust but were thwarted when the Richmond full back marked on the goal line.

Dad signalled time moments later. For good reason. The crowd at the ground that afternoon numbered a phenomenal 109,396 and the last thing he wanted was to be caught in the midst of the stampede. We sidled our way out of the row and approached the nearest exit. Ever hopeful, I took one last glance at the field of play.

With the premiership trophy up for grabs, the park surrounding the stadium was close to deserted. And yet temporarily lifeless vehicles – Holdens, Falcons, Volkswagens and Morrises, among others – were everywhere. Weaving a path around them, we heard the blare of the final siren.

The car radio conveyed the news. Richmond had prevailed by nine points, one of our wingers, Tony Polinelli, having scored a behind in the dying seconds of the match. We nursed our disappointment in silence on the long drive home though we felt justifiably proud that the team had been gallant in defeat.

On another Saturday during the footy season in the late sixties my brothers and I were in the car with Dad when he pulled up behind a vehicle at a railway crossing in Carrum, about ten minutes from home. The lights and bells were functioning but there was no sign of a train, either city or Frankston bound. Dad, growing hot under the collar, tooted the Holden's horn. "Come on! There's nothing coming. What does this joker think he's up to?"

He sounded the horn again, much to the annoyance of the driver of the Vanguard sedan in front of us. Indignant, this young, curly-haired man left his female companion and confronted Dad, who wasted no time rising to the challenge. The two presented arms. "What are you waiting for? Get a move on!"

"I'll stay here as long as I bloody well like! I'll stay here till doomsday if I want!"

"You will, will you?"

The squabble petered out, ending when the two scowling combatants returned to their controls. The lights and bells mysteriously ceased their blinking and clanging seconds later and all comers traversed the line. Dad changed down a gear at a red traffic semaphore near Carrum station, the other side of Patterson River. Guffawing, he turned to the three of us. "I wonder what his sheila thoughta that!" We reached home and could not wait to tell Mum about the affray.

Regular promotion in his job provided the means for Dad and Mum to move closer to the realisation of their dream of a home of our own. They took a liking to a plot of land in East Frankston and a builder commenced laying the foundations early in 1968, about ten years after we began residing in the rented lodgings on Cambridge Street.

Winter segued into spring and the date marked down for the move drew nearer, honing our excitement. We often scouted the locale, more rural in flavour than where we currently lived, though just two miles or so farther east. Effectively, the expanding township had yet to spread its tentacles this far. There were vacant plots and unmade roads, including the one that ran by the bottom of Kiandra Court. An unbroken line of dense bush divided this stretch of road and another running parallel.

We assessed the work in progress on average every other weekend and ambled from room to room, imagining furniture and possessions here and there. It was resolved well in advance which room Marty would take and which one Chris and I would share. If time permitted, we sat cross-legged on the floor and drank pre-prepared tea out of plastic mugs.

Dad sometimes took an alternate route back to Cambridge Street, one that offered another snapshot of this formerly unknown part of town. Close by snaked the non-electrified single railway line that linked Frankston with the rural spreads to the south and southeast. The winding road beyond a crossing meandered past a rubbish tip.

The move went ahead in late October, ten days after our last inspection. On the morning in question we took a final peek in the rooms, now bereft of furniture, of the old weatherboard. No more would it comprise the centre stage of our lives. We would no longer be obligated to relieve ourselves in a rickety backyard shed when calls of nature came. We were stepping up in the world. Having been granted the day off school, Marty, Chris and I assisted as we could with the shift, an episode that became a significant talking point among our classmates.

The last removalist's van drew out of Kiandra Court at the end of the afternoon. The long anticipated task completed, for a moment we did not quite know what to do with ourselves. Sighing with a mixture of enervation and contentment, Mum led the way into the living room and the adjoining kitchen. Outfitted, it possessed the air of a home.

Around the time we swapped one part of town for another, we had a second change of import to contemplate: Marty's imminent switch to secondary school. One Sunday afternoon we scrutinised the two possibilities Mum and Dad settled on when they discussed the issue of our secondary education. It was taken for granted that Chris and I would follow in Marty's footsteps at the appropriate juncture.

Our initial sighting of the first school was of its rear grounds, a grassy area behind a tall wire fence featuring tennis courts and cricket nets. Dad decelerated to a stop and consulted a road map Mum held open. He then made a left turn at the next street and drove by some of the buildings. We stopped again at the end of the street, near where it intersected Beach Road. In the near distance the water of Half Moon Bay sparkled in the early spring sunlight. On our left were two more playing fields, in the background other buildings.

We were in Mentone, a seaside suburb about twelve miles north of Frankston. Our appraisal completed, we drove east for half an hour until we entered the suburb of Dandenong, there carrying out an easy paced reconnoitre of the alternative school. The flat, industrialised landscape did nothing for the eye.

"I don't think there's any comparison," said Mum. "What do you think, boys?" she asked, turning round.

"I like the other one," said Chris.

"Yeah, it's better."

"I think so too," I said.

Dad pursed his lips. "I see. It'd be easier to get to than this place."

Silence, as if by tacit agreement, filled the vehicle when a current hit tune began playing on the radio. Dad pulled out into traffic and whistled a few bars in accompaniment. Boys aspiring to study at the Mentone college were required to sit an entrance examination, a hurdle the three of us surmounted when called on to do so.

***

Sitting up in bed, pillows supporting our backs, Chris and I were enjoying a lie-in on a Saturday morning not long after the move. Saturday morning was the undisputed best morning of the week. It held a special place in the hearts of my brothers and me. The next school week was yet a reassuring distance away and there was the periodic extravagance of breakfast in bed.

The open slats of the Venetian blind on our window permitted the wan light of a grey morning. After swallowing a mouthful of cereal, I turned toward Chris. Before I opened my mouth to speak he met my glance. We had become so adroit at reading each other's minds that as often as not we did not require our curious spin on the language to communicate.

In an instant, raised voices from the kitchen shattered the peace and quiet. We discontinued eating for a moment and attended to Mum and Dad's argument. I took a last mouthful of cereal and masticated painstakingly until Dad, wrapped in a dressing gown, entered the room with two plates of toast.

"That's bloody rot and you know it!"

He handed one of the plates to Chris, the other to me, swooped on our almost empty cereal bowls and left the room as speedily as he entered. In the background, the quarrel continued, Mum's voice becoming increasingly shrill. Sounds, I had discovered, possessed as much capacity to frazzle and upset as they did to instil joy. From my perspective, music sat at one end of the spectrum, voices raised in anger or hatred the other.

Unable to bite back on my unease, I began snivelling, tears that Dad detected amid the maelstrom. Holding his own cereal bowl, he reappeared in our room and sat on the edge of my bed. I felt his consoling hand on my upper arm. "Never mind, Snowball!" He patted me until the tears subsided. "Come down the street with me later."

Frankston's central business district was swamped with the usual tidal wave of Saturday morning shoppers. But Dad espied a parking space without much ado and after completing the necessary manoeuvres switched off the engine and yanked the keys out of the ignition. He held still a moment, gazing through the windscreen.

"I'm blowed if I should stop arguing with her." I recognised the set of his face, the expression that always denoted an unbending mood. "But I will, for your sake."

He stepped onto the bitumen but at the last moment anticipated that I might wish to listen to the radio. He reinserted the key in the ignition, turned to the accessory position and switched the radio on. I adjusted the dial until I found a popular tune to my liking. Dad's assurance offered hope yet I wondered if a truce, consigning his and Mum's not infrequent heated rows to the past, could come into force as simply as that.

***

If he dreamed of turning one of his offspring into a proficient sportsman, Tom perhaps did so in honour of the memory of his late older brother Jim, a superb athlete who in his short life excelled at football, cricket, long distance running, boxing and rowing. But none of his indirect descendants were chips off that old block.

Like all Australian children born and bred near the sea, brine ran in our veins, though the truth of the matter was that we had not even learned to swim as such. To remedy this situation, Dad enrolled us in formal swimming lessons in the early seventies. Off we drove one Saturday morning to a municipal pool in Dandenong, dressed in shorts and light cotton tops and lugging beach towels.

But a locked gate confronted the parents and children who showed up that morning. A few minutes later a tan young woman, an employee of the council responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the baths, arrived and informed us that the commencement of the lessons had been postponed until the following weekend.

Determined not to waste the perfect summer morning, we made our way to Frankston beach. Dad parked the car a prudent distance from where the filthy Kananook Creek disgorged its pollutants into the bay. Nine o'clock had not struck and the beach was nearly deserted. My brothers and I stripped down to our swimming trunks and inched our way into the cool element.

"Do youse realise that however old you become I'll always be that bit older?"

Chris and I exchanged a glance. Marty had spoken apropos nothing special.

"So?" asked Chris.

"I hadn't given it much thought," I replied. Dad charged into the water with a Neanderthal shriek, soaking the three of us. For the next half-minute or so it was every man for himself. Later in the season, we backtracked to Dandenong and attend two or three of the formal lessons. But Marty was the only one who demonstrated an aptitude for this kind of instruction and we did not see out the course.

My indisposition in this kind of forum was the shape of things to come. In any case, the beach was far more pleasant, either our much maligned town beach or an alternative boasting cleaner water and sand further down the peninsula. We had a fondness for the robust granulated sand at Mt Martha, between Mornington and Safety Beach, a twenty-minute drive from home, and often journeyed there on languid summer Sundays.

To reach Mt Martha we drove over a long, steep downgrade shy of the coast. One memorable weekend we came to the grade with three polystyrene foam surfboards – a Christmas present – secured to the roof. Dad, already driving at speed, let the vehicle gather more thrust. As we careered downhill, Mum glanced at him, unimpressed at his lairising. The sound of a rubber cord striking metal above us preceded the bizarre sight of one of the boards spinning in mid-air.

Dad applied the brakes though not before the other two boards backflipped in turn. The road being clear of traffic in either direction, he reversed to where the boards had landed in the scrub at the bitumen's edge. Grinning, he left his seat and reattached them to the roof before retaking the controls.

His attempt, around the same time, to make a pugilist of one of us also met with ignominious failure. On the Christmas morning in question, Marty opened one of his parcels to find a pair of boxing gloves. The dubiousness of the purchase struck everyone immediately. The feeling intensified when I found a replica among my individual gifts. No one said a thing and Dad met the looks everyone gave him with a non-committal expression.

Poppa and Nana joined us for the day, as was their custom. They arrived shortly after we returned home from morning mass. Early in the afternoon, with our gifts unwrapped, we sat at the table in the living room waiting for Mum to apply the ultimate touches to Christmas dinner.

"Can I help you, love?" May asked her.

"No, I'm nearly there," she said, pouring boiling water from a pot into the sink.

Dad and Poppa were at opposite ends of the table, engaged in mellow conversation. "I'm not a bad sleeper, generally," commented Dad. "Sometimes I don't have the best of nights."

Poppa lightly tapped the arm of his chair with the middle finger of his right hand. He could relate to his son-in-law's experience. "Lying resting for a few hours does good anyway."

"Oh, definitely."

Poppa, seated on my immediate left, began looking at me during the ensuing silence. I returned his smile until we were grinning at one another for all we were worth.

Weather permitting, our preferred form of post-Christmas dinner recreation was an hour or so of cricket. But this day bode a different diversion. Dad's present of boxing gloves, which my brothers and I were keen to try out, saw to that.

In the middle of the afternoon we went downstairs to the double garage beneath the house. Against the far wall stood Dad's workbench. A collection of garden tools hung from the wall at right angles. Several large containers were arrayed in the corners nearest the driveway. Marty and I took up positions in the middle of the space and sparred with venom, imagining ourselves fighters in a ring. Chris spectated.

After a breather Chris and I took a turn. Again, the unofficial bout became willing in a short space of time. Fired up, we endeavoured to land some colossal blows, the majority of which missed their mark. We stopped a minute or so later, simmering with mutual antagonism. I removed my gloves, which smelled as new as when I first removed their wrapping, and put them down. Marty and Chris then hit me several times on the head and body. They started for the front door as Poppa, Mum and Dad, overhearing the brouhaha, appeared.

"I'm gonna get youse two!" I roared at the retreating pair. The fact that they ignored me added fuel to the fire. I shrieked again, out of the depths of my hurt. "I'm gonna make youse pay!" Before I could say anything else, or make good on the threat, Poppa took my hand and led me from the scene.

We walked to the one-time tip, which had recently metamorphosed into a sporting complex given the name Jubilee Park, with two football fields and a small trotting track. The tears had not dried on my face when we crossed the railway line and arrived. But I felt uncommonly blessed to have my tall, thin grandfather to myself. That fact alone did much to disarm.

"Mary's got consumption!" he said, as we neared the smaller of the two ovals. He mimicked the actions of sniffing, clearing his throat and spitting. He had entertained us at the house, even his mildly disapproving wife and younger daughter, with this act in the past and I was no less delighted to witness his special matinee performance.

We made ourselves comfortable on the grass at the top of a slope on the southern extremity of the field. From there we could see out over the tract to the houses and trees in the background. In the centre of the oval, a length of rope tied around four poles enclosed a cricket pitch. Peering into the distance, I felt him slyly reach out a hand and begin tickling me. I howled with laughter. He removed his hand but launched another attack straightaway, bringing me to laughter again.

I returned to the house, his firm, warm hand linked with mine, with a spring in my step and no longer seriously entertaining thoughts of bloody vengeance. He bodily carried me part the way up the path leading to the front door. It would take several years, but one day I would realise what a priceless lesson I learnt that bittersweet afternoon.

***

Even a fleeting look at events on the broad stage in the late sixties revealed that the world stood on the brink. The disorder prevalent in many corners of the globe in prior decades threatened to commingle and come to a head in a cataclysm more far-reaching than the two world wars. On a personal level, I counted myself as fortunate to move into a second decade of life. A mere centimetre to the right or left and another destiny would have been sealed.

In the first period of our residency at Kiandra Court, Dad busied himself in the garden every Saturday and Sunday. One Saturday afternoon within weeks of the move, while Marty and I ran amok near the garage, he laboured in the patch behind us, just out of sight. From where he worked away unseen, he would have been able to hear us skylarking.

His industry aside, the garden at this time remained a patchwork of stones, loose earth and weeds. Marty and I kept each other amused hurling bits and pieces. But our tomfoolery came to an abrupt end the moment he unleashed a small but solid chip of wood. With a loud crack, it struck me on the right side of the face, on the bone between my right eye and temple. Blood poured, sending me into hysterics. Overhearing the outcry, Dad downed tools and dashed round the front of the house.

The next day we embarked on our regular Sunday outing. Dad drove to Melbourne and parallel parked on one of the main streets in the central business district. The moment Mum left us to make a purchase in a store, he turned round in the driver's seat and gave me the once-over. Fortune had favoured me. The missile had left no vestige apart from a cut that would later scar over. At that moment a thin strip of plastic hid it from view. He turned back to the front, his arm resting atop the upholstery.

"You're bloody lucky, mate. They would've been calling you one-eye at school."

I realised this was only the half of it. What he omitted to mention was that those same schoolmates who in situation x might have elected such a moniker – supplanting 'Lizard', their most popular one for me – would in hypothetical situation y have attended my funeral. Bullet-like blows to the temple were, as I understood it, generally fatal and I doubt I would have survived to tell the tale.

As things turned out, one close shave was not enough. I diced with the Grim Reaper again in the near future. Sometime after I received a secondhand bicycle as a Christmas present, Chris and I started for the milk bar located on a T-intersection about a quarter mile from the house. I wheeled my trusty transport out of the garage and onto the footpath running by the bottom of the court. We made a left onto Hillcrest Road and began ascending the upgrade.

A couple of hundred metres farther on we scaled the highest point. We could see our goal in the near distance. I mounted the bicycle and pedalled off, leaving Chris with the guarantee that I would meet him outside the shop. Yards away from the intersection, I applied the foot brake and slowed almost to a stop.

Ignoring the fact that there was a Morris Minor on my right, I pressed down on the pedals, convinced I had time to cross. I had not even made it halfway when I understood I had grossly underestimated the vehicle's speed. To the jarring screech of rubber on bitumen, the driver swerved round my front wheel and recovered a straight course without dropping momentum.

I pulled up on the footpath out front of the row of shops and dismounted, my heart thumping insanely against my rib cage. I could barely breathe. A meagre strip of bone saved me the first time. Now, only the Jack Brabham-like alertness of a driver – whether a man or a woman I never found out – kept me from the most unequivocal of fates.

Once might be regarded as a coincidence. But twice? Clearly, I had not served out my time in this incarnation. Not for me an early dispensing of the body. Was I in the place I needed to be in after all? After this second near miss the message began sinking in and I resolved to stop chancing my arm. Someone, I had to acknowledge, was saving me for up something and whoever it was might not prove so forgiving the next time!

***

Sister Bernadette, our sixth grade teacher, while cut from the same cloth as her fellow nuns, paid lip service to the notion that we might be acquiring a scrap of maturity. When she so desired, she could apply pressure exactly in accord with our austere Catholic upbringings. An instance of this occurred in the middle of the year, in the aftermath of the selection of a football squad to face off against the sixth graders from the Protestant school on the other side of the Davey Street intersection.

The day before the Friday match, we stood at an impasse. It was incumbent on our class to provide one of the two boundary umpires, but no one had declared himself willing to assume the duty. "Is someone going to volunteer?" Sister Bernadette squinted at us steely-eyed from the front of the room. "Unless someone's willing to umpire, the game's off!"

Those among us who had failed to gain selection in the team exchanged looks. Everyone was counting the seconds, waiting for a voice to break the deadlock. Of those who missed out, I had come as close as anyone to being chosen to represent the school. For this reason, I intuited that many regarded me as the logical person to put up his hand.

Playing the role of the good sport in this way would also allow me to take an active part in the next day's proceedings, if only to the degree of striding back and forth along one of the boundary lines. I regarded the 'second prize' of boundary umpiring as a small mercy and could rouse scant interest in the prospect. But sensing the eyes of several of my classmates, to say nothing of Sister Bernadette's, upon me, I buckled under the collective self-righteous pressure.

Off we went to the large oval where the local Victorian Football Association team played their home fixtures. Patrolling the boundary line on the northern periphery, whistle in hand, I often heard Sister Bernadette and the girls in our class rapturously applaud the efforts of our representatives. Those of our captain Grant, popular with the girls at anytime, were especially well received.

When the fourth and final quarter ran its course, the central umpire raised his arms to signal the end of the game. Having emerged victorious, my classmates congratulated each other. Sister initiated a round of applause that everyone joined in. "Congratulations, boys!" Grant led the team into the dressing room. I followed close on their heels.

Sister referred to another game-related obligation during class the following Monday, when we still wore the flush of victory. "If you see any of the boys from the other team, give them a little praise." Something out the classroom window distracted her for a split second. "Just because a team wins doesn't mean they can't have a good word for their opponents."

I thought this an interesting suggestion for the simple reason that ninety-nine percent of the time we had absolutely nothing to do with our Protestant foes. We used to plod by their domain on our way to and from church as though transiting the margin of a leper colony. In fact, one of their team lived near us on Cambridge Street. It was not uncommon for me to sight him out and about. I made a mental note to put Sister's advice into practice when the opportunity arose, but never succeeded in doing so.

This was the year of the moon landing and walk. The excitement surrounding the event that July was infectious, at home and school. At the latter we talked of little else in the days leading up to and immediately following the feat. Sister pointed out that we were privileged to witness this achievement, adding that in years to come we might behold greater accomplishments of the kind. In the heavily circumscribed Catholic universe, where everything appeared black and white, this assuredly ranked among the good.

We knew – none knew this better than me – that those who dabbled in sin did so at their peril. On the other hand, there was much that one could get away with, afterwards receiving no more disapprobation than an act of contrition and the recitation of a couple of 'Our Fathers' and / or 'Hail Marys'. I found it hard to take seriously this inconsistent faith that offered such easy outs. Or was the black and white dichotomy not as marked as we were led to believe? Were there, in truth, varying shades when it came to transgressions? Were we only told of irredeemable sin to frighten the dickens out of us?

I believed it more likely that the actions with which we informed our lives either helped or hindered our spiritual progress. Viewed in that uncomplicated light, antithetical degrees of sin and repentance only muddied the waters. Such gradations were for moralists and fundamentalists.

Incongruously, given how it tormented me off and on for years, I could not pronounce the word 'conscience' when Sister Bernadette chalked it on the blackboard during an English lesson. Stumped, I broke it into its two logical components, 'con' and 'science'. Sister set me straight and at her insistence I parroted the proper pronunciation.

***

Television's torrent of words and images impacted our lives as both a blessing and a curse. Without it we would never have been able to see one of twentieth century man's towering triumphs at the very moment it occurred so far away in indefinable space. But it also dished up much that left the rankest of aftertastes.

The atrocities of the Vietnam War, in which Australian soldiers fought, were wounded and died, appeared on a nightly basis when that conflict heated up. Though an unwitting viewer, exposure to the most savage instances of brutality on the evening newscasts left me gutted for days. But I am sure I thought to ask myself if that large box of valves, lights, cables and wires truly deserved pride of place in the living room and the court we nightly paid it.

It occurs to me now, with the benefit of many years hindsight, that I experienced one of the most decisive moments of my life around the cusp of my teenage years. Near the end of a hot afternoon in summer, Dad sat at one end of the living room table engrossed in the _Herald_. In deference to the weather, he had dressed down to shorts and a singlet.

Mum, also attired in light summer clothing, was in the kitchen preparing dinner. From the living room, where I sat watching television with Marty and Chris, I heard her open one of the cupboards near the refrigerator, bring several plates from within and set them on the island near the table. Without even seeing her I imagined the light film of perspiration on her skin, faintly roseate with the combined heat of the day and her labour.

Chris and I were on the couch next to the largest window. Marty, away to our left, sat on the armchair right of the door into the passage. Of the three of us, I was closest to the television set, the volume of which was raised beyond the usual level to offset the incessant whirr of a fan positioned in the middle of the carpet. The spinning blades rotated the head back and forth in a gliding motion.

In keeping with the day, my brothers and I were wearing shorts and loose cotton tops. Lethargy reigned, legacy of the redoubtable heat. After a while I stopped staring at the screen and its procession of images. My gaze drifted to the window left of the screen and the light the fully closed Venetian blind yet failed to keep out. I half-turned toward Chris, seated at the other end of the couch. Though I did not go so far as to look straight at him, for a brief interval he commanded my wholesale attention.

I became aware of Marty in the same way before focusing on the revolving head of the fan. As I did, I heard not the humming noise it made or the sound of the television but rather the array of noises radiating from the kitchen – the clink of glasses and cutlery, the opening and closing of more cupboards and drawers – as Mum began dishing up the meal.

I rested my head against the topmost part of the couch and stared unseeing into a corner. Everything lost its authenticity. For several moments, the noise and flickering images emanating from the screen, the presence of my brothers and father, the scattered sounds from the kitchen, the aroma of cooked meat and vegetables, the cloying warmth that showed no sign of diminishing, the brightness behind the Venetian blinds, lacked substance. I felt completely removed, at one and the same time the dreamer and spectator.

When Mum announced dinner everything resumed its rightful place and I thought no more about the state I had slipped into. But the peculiar ambience of the day left a lasting impression and, in a manner of speaking, the implications of those moments would govern my life from then on. The cold reality of the day-to-day often seemed like the thinnest of veils; in a decided way it lacked verisimilitude. By comparison, the nighttime world of dreams presented itself as much more worthy of attention, especially if it provided insight into one's real nature.

But if so-called reality was a dream, were not the dreams one experienced at night dreams within a dream? Just as we awakened from them of a morning, were we not then bound one day to awaken also from this more all-encompassing dream? On that day would we not come face to face with what was definitively real?

From that balmy late afternoon on, I grew impatient for the truth. I suspected that the experience of 'other realities' might ultimately lead to that verity. I would often wonder if it did not inhabit the innermost depths of each of us. Of course it was one thing to hypothesise that the world was an illusion; it would be another matter altogether to know this in the marrow of one's bones. Paradoxical as it may seem, illusion was something that needed to be lived through, or experienced, before it could be broken apart. The journey could not fail to be long and complex.

**Part Two: The Second of Three**

When man becomes a little enlightened he compares his experiences relating to the material creation, gathered in the wakeful state, with his experiences in dreams; and, understanding the latter to be merely ideas, begins to entertain doubts as to the substantial existence of the former. His heart then becomes propelled to know the real nature of the universe and, struggling to clear his doubts, he seeks for evidence to determine what is truth. In this state man is called 'kshatriya', or one of the military classes; and to struggle in the manner aforesaid becomes his natural duty, by whose performance he may get an insight into the nature of creation and attain the real knowledge of it.

Sri Yukteswar _The Holy Science_

The misconception relating to the order of my two given names lasted more than a decade. I may have derived cold comfort from the fact that, unlike Dad, I did not suffer the mortification of a misspelling on my birth certificate. But the evidence laid out in black and white came as a shock at the outset.

I set to work without delay on the strange initialling and the need to tweak my name otherwise on sundry documentation. Not knowing the story, some people addressed me as Owen, an appellation I responded to though I never quite lost the feeling that they were addressing someone else, not me. Years later I learnt that in the Celtic language my first given name signified 'young warrior.'

I took Peter as my confirmation name and for a time wrote my full name as Lindsay Owen Peter Boyd, not cognisant at this point in time that the order was muddled up. Nicknames, or spins on real names, were a part of the culture in my native land and before the seventies commenced several had been conferred on me – 'Snowball', courtesy Dad, and 'Lizard', the invention of my primary school classmates, being the most enduring.

Of course both were affectionate nicknames and so existed at a remove from the hateful ones Dad said he and his four siblings goaded each other with while growing up. There were echoes of this among my brothers and me although we never went overboard. Whenever we wished to get each other's goats up, we generally resorted to other stratagems.

The nicknames kept coming in the years ahead, so many in reality that I might have been forgiven for wondering where it all left me. If I was 'this' to one person or group of people, 'that' to another, who was I at the end of the day? Did I possess multiple identities that chopped and changed at the whim of others, like a character in a Pirandello play?

I had seen evidence aplenty of the dangers and shortsightedness of this other kind of 'naming' at primary school, but came across it much more frequently at secondary college. How often one's capability was judged, or presumed, on the basis of something as superficial as appearance and how alienating it could feel to be left out or chosen by sufferance.

A friend of mine, Michael, gained selection in one of the teams that lined up to play football at the Mt Evelyn camp we attended for a week in first form in just this way. He possessed a quirk, a somewhat distinctive way of speaking. Come to think of it, this may have been one of the reasons I was drawn to him.

Two captains were chosen and one by one hailed those whom they wanted. Eventually there was only Michael and one other boy left. The captain with the next pick sized them up indifferently. Then, with an undisguised lack of enthusiasm, he indicated for Michael, who like me was tall and thin, to join his side. The other boy aspiring to take part crossed to the opposite camp.

Shortly after the commencement Michael featured in a stirring passage of play. He worked with similar dedication for the entire match, kicking, marking and tackling as determinedly as anyone afield. I admired his verve. Had I been looked at askance in a similar vein, I might not have acted the same. At the conclusion of the contest, I walked off the ground with Michael. The captain called out. "It looks like I was wrong about you. Well played!" Michael said nothing.

Several of my primary school classmates sat the entrance exam for the Mentone college, all bar one or two of us gaining entrance to the bayside school. In February 1970 I began the daily trek to Mentone alongside many acquaintances. The nearest railway station was Parkdale. We memorised its dimensions within days, the large, shed-like structures halfway along both platforms – shelter for waiting passengers – and, on the city side, the gate at the southern end, near the ticket box and stationmaster's office.

The tools of the signalman's trade – levers, switches and the like – filled one of the windows of the office. Beyond the southern edge of the platform was a crossing. Five or six times an hour, boom gates closed to make way for a city or Frankston bound service, opening again once the coast was clear. Cars and pedestrians interrupted in their transit could then proceed.

Several northbound passengers were waiting on the platform to board the train we arrived on. We swarmed them in a sea of blue on disembarking, dark blue suit jackets or jumpers and long trousers or shorts of the same colour. The light blue blazers that were another _de rigueur_ item in the school regalia were worn less frequently.

On that first morning we shambled toward the locked gate in a controllable mob. One of the station staff took up a position close to the guard's compartment of the train and glanced the length of the platform. He signalled with his left hand, for the benefit of the guard, who then blew a whistle to alert the driver at the other end.

With a few exceptions, such as myself, not due to turn twelve till the following May, we ranged in ages from twelve to eighteen. To my eleven-year-old eyes, the fifth and sixth formers looked like strapping lads. As the train moved, another member of staff unlocked the gate and stood with hands outstretched.

We trickled by him, most of us having acquired term passes. Some of the older boys did not bother to flash their passes, scoffing at what they decreed a perfunctory gesture. The school grounds lay an easy walk of around a quarter mile from the station. We arrived via the back oval, as students and teachers alike referred to the square shaped space.

When I sighted the grounds in late 1969, on the morning of the entrance exam, and again now, I recognised them by dint of the exploratory visit made with the rest of the family toward the end of 1968. Every school morning in 1970 and again in 1971 I zeroed in on the buildings to the left of those beyond the tennis courts, cricket nets and the grassy playing field.

This was the junior school, the first two forms and the fifth and sixth grade classrooms. The college served as an upper grade primary school for a select few from the area. The middle school buildings, forms three and four, clustered in the centre, those of the highest two forms to their right.

The dimensions of the rooms at college aped those of the primary school I had finished with, from the rows of evenly spaced desks and the immense blackboards at the front, to the ceiling high windows. Long poles, hooked at the ends, were required to open and close the topmost parts of the windows. Differences of significance lay in the absence of girls and the fact that religious brothers rather than nuns formed the backbone of the teaching staff.

In an early English lesson I underwent an experience eerily reminiscent of many undergone at the primary school in my hometown. The teacher, Mr Cheetham, had moved away from the blackboard and now straddled the edge of one of the desks in the row two along from the window. I held a place roughly in the centre of the third row.

"In any case I think we've said enough about that topic for one day." He checked the time. "We've a few minutes left. I'll talk a little about prepositions. It ties in with what we've been speaking of." I looked away from him and slumped in my seat. He went on in his rich bass. "Now, prepositions are normally placed before nouns or pronouns. _To_ Mr Smith. _To_ us. But they can also be followed by verbs. They were charged _with_ escaping.

"What you must figure out is whether, in a construction, a preposition is required or not and if one is required which one to use." The tone of his voice altered almost imperceptibly. I had no idea that he had picked up on my momentary inattentiveness or that his eyes were fixed on me. "Is that clear?" Without warning, the voice boomed. "I am _talking to you, son_!"

Realising he meant me, my hair stood on end and I blushed to its very roots. His voice returned to normal, but the dark eyes held me captive. "Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," I answered, blanketing my vexation as best I could.

"Sit up straight and put your hands where I can see them." I did as asked. He then looked away and went on with the lesson.

***

In the first two forms, we assembled daily in the junior school quadrangle, more often than not at the end of the lunch hour, prior to the beginning of the afternoons' periods. One Friday in mid-June, most of the students had lined up in their formations and stood waiting on the junior school principal Brother John, a middle-aged man with greying air whom we nicknamed BJ. The instant he mounted his platform, whistle and microphone at the ready, several stragglers moved into position at the double. Marty, studying in the form above me, was among them, his hands wringing wet after a hasty visit to the lavatory block.

"Keep going, Boydy!" Brother John said into the microphone before my brother had a chance to settle into line with his classmates. He slowed in his walk, flabbergasted. "Keep going!" The eyes of the gathering upon him, he headed into the foyer of the main building. Whenever he felt a boy needed disciplining, BJ called his name at the assembly, precisely as he had called Marty, and dealt out the necessary punishment in the foyer.

Given my older brother's reputation as an upstanding student, the fact that he was to be on the receiving end of the strap created quite a stir. Several of my classmates turned their heads and gazed at me, as if to gauge my reaction to this monumental turning of the tables. Brother John again spoke into his microphone. "Quiet."

I witnessed a second public humiliation of Marty later in the winter, at another assembly in the quadrangle. Once again, the basis of the loss of face lay in the gap between what was expected of him and what came to pass. The second formers had sat their junior government scholarship exams weeks before, Marty being among the firm favourites to net a grant.

A special assembly was held to announce the successful candidates. Brother John stood on the podium, florid complexioned Mr Adams, one of the lay staff, kept vigil to the side, a number of certificates in hand. The principal began speaking into his microphone. "The boys who've won junior government scholarships, in alphabetical order, are: Tom Ainsworth ... John Ball ... Brendan Barron ... David Bell ... "

The recipients proudly received their certificates from a beaming Mr Adams. " ... Edward Bryant ... Ron Buck ... Peter Cairns ... " Marty had obviously missed out on a scholarship. I ignored the insinuations of the classmates around me and instead kept watching him. He looked grief-stricken and speechless. From a distance I could tell that several of his friends were offering condolence.

***

Our French master Mr Alltoft, in an effort to regain control of a class that had spun into disarray, brought his strap hard down on the edge of one of the desks at the front of the room. I was sitting there beside Frank, a boy I had come to know since beginning second form six weeks earlier. The impact shook the living daylights out of the pair of us. "Awright! That's enough! Stop your noise!"

Many of the teachers at the school, especially in the lower forms, exercised control with an iron fist. Others, Mr Alltoft being a prime example, struggled to keep us in line, with the result that all hell often broke loose. Thus we passed many a day gravitating back and forth between near riotous situations to others in which we barely dared blink.

While they lasted, we took a juvenile enjoyment in the ruckuses in Jimmy Alltoft's French classes, even those among the assembled, such as Frank and I, who sought no active role in the shenanigans. But the boot could change foot with blinding speed.

One morning following a typically uproarious French lesson we wended our way to a room on the opposite side of the quadrangle for the next class, music appreciation. But Mrs Widdop was nowhere to be seen. Several of the boys needed no more incentive than this to prolong their pranks outside the locked door.

Unwisely, they targeted a crate of milk intended for the fifth and sixth graders. When Mrs Widdop appeared, accompanied by Brother Michael, they were not yet done with the small bottles. A man about thirty years of age, Brother Michael had taken over from Brother John as junior school principal. The departed BJ's propensity for the leather had not hindered our liking for him. We found him fair-minded in a way impossible to imagine with many of his religious and lay consorts. Rumour had it that he later renounced his religious calling with the De La Salle brothers.

His young, black-haired successor had proven himself another entity altogether. Taking in the goings-on, he left the music teacher's side and rushed forward. The miscreants – telltale white smudges on their upper lips identified them as unambiguously as any eye witness – frantically stopped what they were doing and made pathetic attempts to feign innocence. Of course Brother Michael would have none of it. Withdrawing the ace up his sleeve, he wielded it concertina-like on as many as eight of the milk pilferers.

"Who else was acting the clown?"

Four more of the boys owned up and received cuts of the strap. Adrenalin flowing, the bald-faced junior school principal then disappeared, leaving us to shadow Mrs Widdop into the classroom. Hands by her midriff, she watched us take our seats. The castigated wrung their palms, which bore varying degrees of redness.

"I'm sure no one wants a repeat of that." Her veiled threat was unnecessary after such an onslaught.

***

In this milieu I conducted myself according to the tenets of the war with authority I had nominally been caught up in for years. But I understood that it would be dangerous, if not foolhardy, for a 'young warrior' to show his face openly in this environment. Better to work away in silence and not upset the applecart. In that way I would rebel as effectively as any self-declared rebel.

But I was going to have to dig in the heels. School, with its subjects of little innate interest, and teachers who nitpicked for the slightest reason, could be tedious in the extreme. While the opportunities to let off steam were few, we made sure to arrest full advantage from those that did arise. A dilapidated house on The Corso, our principal thoroughfare on the walk to and from Parkdale Station, functioned as an unofficial after school recreation and gathering place for many over a period of several weeks.

There, I often ran into Marty and some of his best mates. Cigarettes were passed around as we sized up the crumbling foundations. The relatively intact furniture left behind did not stay unmolested for long. One of Marty's more enterprising friends brought a knife with him on one visit. Yodelling like Tarzan, he ran it the length of both arms of an easy chair prior to inserting the sharp end in the cushion and ripping that to shreds.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he burst into song, putting his own unique spin on the lyrics of a current hit. "You sit on a bowl and try to crack a turd, but you know it don't come easy!" He turned to Marty. "Have you heard that song, Boydy?"

"Sure have."

I visited the tumbledown house again a couple of weeks later, in the company of a chubby friend, Garry. We separated ourselves from our classmates soon after we spilled onto the back oval at the close of the school day, bags slung over our shoulders. At the front gate of the abandoned property, we sidled through and continued to the unlocked rear entrance.

We wasted no time in setting to work. Had passers-by on the street taken the time to stop and lend an ear, they would have eavesdropped on a racket of smashing and breaking that kept up for half an hour or so. Midway through the rampage, Garry and I picked up a chair and heaved it against a wall. We then smashed in some cupboards in what had been the kitchen. In another part of the house, I seized a long, narrow length of wood and hurled it like a javelin into a pane of glass high above a door at the end of a passage. The glass blew apart in countless pieces.

I stood still a moment and heard Garry grunting in the next room. I joined him and together we succeeded in ripping up a floorboard. The effort cost so much energy that he unleashed a fearsome yell as we applied the _coup de gras_. He dispatched the floorboard in a corner and gave me a grin. We took a well-earned smoking break, Garry supplying me with one of a pair of cigarettes brought from his shirt pocket.

***

Within weeks of being made privy to the purported facts of life, I attended a short interview at the school with a visiting priest, a vermillion faced, burly man not unlike Father Woodcock in appearance. "What do you hope to do once you leave school?" Unable to come up with a quick answer, I looked away. "Would you like to go on to further study?"

"Yes, Father."

"Fine. And then?" I could not think what to say. "You can't study at university without some aim in mind. You see that, don't you?" I acquiesced and felt relieved when he changed the subject. "How do you get on with your classmates?"

"Okay, Father. I have a few friends."

"And girls?"

I gave him a vague look. "I haven't got any girlfriends."

The admission left him unmoved. "That's nothing to worry about. Not at your age." I was silent. "I'm sure you'll make the right decisions." He thrust out his right hand. Not expecting the interview to conclude so peremptorily, I stood and took his hand. "Show in the next boy on your way out."

The regularity with which interviews of this kind were conducted at the college left me with an even greater sense of being under the thumb than I had known at primary school. For the most part, however, members of the staff rather than specially invited outsiders were the overseers. I would have done anything to abscond, but this was out of the question.

Near the end of first term in the middle school, the principal Brother Peter took time out from fine-tuning a building boom at the college to conduct random interviews in the library. Naturally enough, I did not appreciate the prospect of a head to head with him though his appearances among us were so frequent over a period of several weeks that it would have required a miracle to give him the slip.

I set myself up for my reckoning when I chose a lower floor carrel right in the line of fire. Brother Peter waltzed in out of nowhere and took the seat next to me. He kept his back turned while he chatted with another boy. I lacked the gall to simply up and leave, but instead altered my posture in an effort to appear deep in study. But our teachers knew the gambits. As soon as he finished with the other boy, he swung round and brought a hand to my bare knees in such a way that I had no choice but to face him. He went on fondling my knees throughout the chat.

My insecurity at this time could turn home into as much of a threat as the shut-in college. Threat lay everywhere: the glaring lights in the kitchen when we partook of dinner; the ordeal of the meal itself, the frequent silences broken only by the chink of cutlery and knives and forks against plates; Mum and Dad's questions; the _Very nice, thank you. May I leave the table, please?_ post-repast ritual entrenched in us from a young age. All conspired to unsettle me.

We did not need to simulate liking of the great majority of the meals Mum prepared at the close of days on which she had often already worked many hours at her late discovered profession as a driving instructor. But the time she prepared tripe it would have required better than average acting skills to impart conviction to the exit line. We sat in silence and watched her dish up the meal – Dad, Marty and me at the table, Chris on a wobbly stool at the kitchen island a couple of feet away.

Mum placed a plate of tripe before him and then brought three more to the table. As she fetched her own helping, I glanced unenthusiastically at the offering. Taking her place, she rebuked me. "You'll sit there till you eat it!" Seeing no way out, I retrieved my knife and fork. I seized on something less menacing in the middle of the table – bread on a plate and beside it a tub of margarine.

"May I have a piece of bread?"

"Please!"

"May I have a piece of bread, please?"

"Yes."

I reached for a slice, spread some margarine and then watched Marty tackle a mouthful of tripe. Because Chris's back was to me, I could not see the expression on his face. I cut a small portion of tripe and brought it to my mouth but retarded the action when I heard Chris gag. Marty, who had unflinchingly taken another mouthful a moment before, stopped chewing and I replaced my knife and fork. This would be tripe's one and only encroachment on the dinner time menu at 9 Kiandra Court.

***

A regular feature of life at the college was yearly excursions. The requisite cost could prove beyond the reach of the parents of some individuals, but the great majority of boys managed to take part. The Mt Evelyn camp visited in first form was the precursor to adventures much farther afield.

The next year we trekked to Mildura, in northwest Victoria, and Broken Hill, across the border in New South Wales. In third form, we set off for the island state of Tasmania, off the mainland's southern coast. This was in emulation of Marty and his peers, who had made the self-same trip the year before.

On the mid-winter evening that we sailed, Mum and I left the house with plenty of time to spare. En route to the port where our ship was berthed, we diverged to pick up Peter, a classmate who lived a few minutes away in Seaford. Little by little daylight dribbled out of the sky and a gusty breeze augured a tempestuous crossing of Bass Strait.

Mum accompanied us to the embarkation point, where some of our fellow travellers were standing. At the last moment, she planted a kiss on my cheek, to which I responded, not a little shyly. "Have a lovely time. Keep warm." She brought a hand to the collar of her coat, as though to emphasise the point. I insisted I would and promised to send a postcard, stopping to turn and wave after I had gone a few paces.

The vessel began rolling dramatically once we passed Port Phillip Heads and entered the strait. The motion kept up for the greater part of the night. To the extent possible, I held myself upright in a chair that bore a likeness to those found in airplanes, a blanket drawn up to my neck to combat the chill.

Finding sleep elusive, I revisited a conversation Dad and Poppa had one Christmas and anchored my eyes shut. I, too, felt sure I would reap some benefit simply from that. I overheard other third formers leave their seats and lurch in the direction of the toilet. Inevitably, when they returned a short time later they felt better for having expelled the contents of their stomachs.

Near first light, one of my classmates, having left his run late, jumped to his feet, his right hand at his mouth and dashed in the direction of the WC. At regular intervals I repeatedly swallowed down my own queasiness. But somehow I came through the night without having to endure similar ignominy.

All the same, I felt less than chipper at breakfast. The city of Devonport, our destination, lay near. The swell had abated and the ship held a smoother passage over the final phase of the journey. At this time in my life any crowd created foreboding, but after the abominable night the numbers lined up in the dining area flew in the face with double the impact.

Following the night's battering, I wanted only to sit alone or with a couple of friends who might have intuited my state of mind and refrained from unnecessary chatter. Such was not to be. The tables at which my closest acquaintances had congregated exclusively were full. Seated at the rest were other third formers and passengers unknown to us.

I vacillated in the centre of the hall until I spied a vacant place at a table where three people were seated, a middle-aged couple and a classmate with whom I rarely exchanged a word. Not a member of his 'gang', my clipped greeting elicited no acknowledgement. I took the place beside him, opposite the couple, and turned to the hotchpotch of items in front of me – a plastic plate, a cup, a saucer, a small cereal packet and a knife, fork and spoon. Milk, tea, coffee, sugar, toast, butter and a choice of spreads were more centrally positioned.

I buttered a piece of toast and began eating, eyes averted, conscious of the flush on my cheeks, which the abysmally long night must have accentuated. Next to me, the other boy gestured with the knife he was holding, toward some of his friends seated at the table across from us. One or two of them signalled in response.

On these trips the tiresome cliques ruled more powerfully than at school. If the excursions were an attempt on the part of the college's powers-that-be to broaden the scope of our oh so limited worlds, they failed in the sense that the participants, as if by rote, fell into the long since writ patterns, not least in their choice of whom to be with.

The high jinks interspersed with more serious undertakings soon palled. Though keyed up at the prospect of new places, the feeling did not last long. Eventually, finding my uncertainty in the outside world as marked as that experienced at school and, to a lesser degree, home, I began longing for those things among the tried and true that I could count on, notably the affectionate welcome Mum would give me on my return to the fold and the music I loved to listen to in the stillness of the bedroom shared with Chris.

***

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Father Kealy's then assistant, accompanied by two altar boys, had stepped onto the chancel moments before. He made the sign of the cross as he invoked the traditional service opening. Good-natured Father Noone, a young man with a mop of curly hair, had in his short time as assistant minister showed himself to be an emphatic contrast to his dour sidekick. Since beginning the posting, he had distinguished himself in a multitude of ways, including the brevity of his services.

"Amen."

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

"And also with you."

"As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of Christ's love, let us acknowledge our failures and ask the Lord for pardon and strength."

The congregation, of which Mum, Dad, Marty, Chris and I formed a part, recited together with the priest. "I confess to Almighty God and to you here present that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do. And I ask Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, all the angels and saints and you here present to pray for me to the Lord our God. May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins and bring us to everlasting life. Amen."

To the assembled's secret, and in some cases not so secret, glee the mass that morning concluded in under forty minutes. Whether we attended the mid or late morning service of a Sunday, we downed lunch – rashers of bacon and eggs on toast – without delay on returning home. The practice of our faith over and done with for another week we could swing our attention to more secular forms of worship.

A Sunday sporting programme on one of the commercial television networks rated as compulsory viewing. We watched with fervour whenever Geelong emerged victorious or failing that went down fighting in their fixture the day before. At this time, however, it was a team in the western part of Geelong, a member of the less renowned Victorian Football Association competition, that took all before them in terms of success.

In the year they went undefeated through the home and away games, they won their first finals match as well and progressed straight into the Grand Final. Mum and Dad dropped Marty, Chris and I off at the venue for the decider, Toorak Park in Prahran, leaving us with the promise that they would return for the finale.

We liked attending VFA matches. The standard of football was good and supporters could position themselves closer to the action than at the much more popular Victorian Football League contests. Fans so disposed climbed the fences around the grounds and joined the team huddles at quarter and three quarter time.

At the close of the third quarter of the Grand Final, the scoreboard showed that we trailed by almost two goals. Together with many other spectators, my siblings and I hopped the fence and crossed to where the players were grouped. Regardless of the deficit there was no sign of panic; the task that lay ahead was clear enough. After the players had taken some refreshment and everyone had quietened down, captain coach Bill Goggin spoke in a calm voice.

"We're two kicks behind. Now, I'm sure that's a gap we can make up inside the first few minutes of this quarter." He said no more. From the players, club personnel and supporters there came a rousing call as all sought to steel the team to victory. The players resumed their positions and the rest of us departed the field in dribs and drabs. Moments later, the last quarter commenced.

Ten minutes into the term, the team showed that their playing coach's confidence in them was not misplaced. A skilful passage of play resulted in a goal and a re-taking of the lead, sending the supporters into euphoria. Standing near the fence on the Toorak Road side of the ground, Marty, Chris and I shared the elation.

Mum and Dad rejoined us almost without our noticing and entered into the spirit. When she could bear to watch, Mum barracked as if her life depended on it, adding to a palpable noise level that extended right round the park. In the match's last moments, the play swung to the side of the ground where we stood. The scoreboard indicated that we held the slenderest of leads.

The WHAAA! of the final siren barely made inroads. But after a repeated sounding or two, everyone realised the nerve-wracking final had ended. Geelong West had captured the premiership and with it the right to move into the top division of the VFA competition. Unable to contain my glee, I leapt the fence and sprinted straight into the arms of Bertie Grattan, one of the team's defenders.

***

Though the achievements of others could make me deliriously happy, I felt uncomfortable with the ethics of competition and success. What did it matter if I outdid someone or someone outdid me? I rarely shone, either on the sporting field or in the classroom. I failed to see why I should compete simply because elders declared this to be good for a growing lad, the way by which a person made something of himself in a dog eat dog world.

Diffident as I was, I believed there were instances when I could have put to shame the efforts of my schoolmates, both at play and in class. But I was seldom suitably inspired. _You always hide your light_ , Nana said to me once. She read me well, not that I wantonly set out to defy the Biblical decree.

But I was in no hurry to step out of the wings. My style was other. Things might have been different had someone bestowed responsibility or vouchsafed me a chance. Such lacking, I preferred the persona of the quintessential dark horse, knowing that I would gain my due in time. One day I would embrace my path. Then, and only then, I would aspire to the sort of excellence that a closet perfectionist harbours and maybe achieve a brilliant luminosity.

My youthful tentativeness probably stemmed in part too from a subconscious recognition or inkling – yes, even so far back! – that any 'glory' I might achieve should not be attributed to me in any case, that in actual fact it rightly belonged to 'something' working through me. Though no one in his or her right mind could have accused me of being an ego tripper, I showed a susceptibility to flattery that if taken to an extreme may have led to my gaining too high an opinion of myself.

But there were moments at this point in time that allowed for a bucking of the trend. On a cool day in mid-winter in fourth form at Mentone, I lined up to participate in a football match on the regular weekly afternoon for sport. I turned in a starring performance, in the opinion of several teammates. Yet exactly a week later, determined not to take part in the Wednesday sports session, I craftily feigned illness to our teacher Mr Lynch.

At college sport was compulsory for all bar the sixth formers. The seniors could take part or not as they pleased. Otherwise, the emphasis on sport in the higher forms attenuated slightly, if at all. Redemption for a boy of dubious scholastic ability lay in prowess as an athlete. Those of no great competence in either area counted for little in the scheme of things.

Besides the handily outfitted school grounds, replete with cricket pitches and fields, cricket nets, tennis courts and handball courts, Beda Park, a college owned sporting complex in Mordialloc, a few miles from the school, served the sporting ends too. It was here that the students who signed up to play cricket in the late summer / early autumn or late spring, and football during the other months, tested their wiles.

At the beginning of the first term in fifth form, I chose cricket. The captain of our team was also the college captain. He was a driven, dual achiever, as adept on the sporting field as in the classroom. Proficiency in both areas was an unwritten but implicit requirement for both the college captain and, though arguably to a lesser extent, vice-captain.

Regrettably, this college captain's notions as to the ability, or lack thereof, of each member of the team were preconceived to the point that he made up his mind who among us would comprise his bowlers for the duration of the term before we took the field for the first match. Together with a number of others, I waited week in week out for an opportunity. We were still waiting when we came to the last week of the term, which fell in the autumn. After a couple of weeks break we would reconvene and make our selections among the winter sports on offer.

The bus for Beda Park on that final Wednesday of the term was packed with boys not only from my form but also the sixth form. In addition, three or four teachers accompanied us. The autumn sunshine reflected off the windows of the junior school building as the stragglers boarded. I overheard the voice of one of Marty's fellow sixth formers, the boy who normally kept wicket for our team.

"Big effort today, Boydy!" Marty had been a regular among the bowlers. He assured his classmate he would do his best.

"Think we'll get a bowl today?" asked my friend Tim, seated next to me.

I shrugged. The gate shut long ago, I felt like responding. Two cricket matches began within half an hour of our arrival at Beda Park, the one featuring our team taking place on a smaller field on the northern extremity. By half past two, the sun was at its warmest on the unseasonably mild afternoon. My teammates and I were fielding. Brother Finian, an affable man with a few scanty tufts of ginger hair on his pate, was officiating at the non-striker's end of the pitch.

From my position in the outfield, I watched Marty bowl with the idiosyncratic action I knew well. The game had fizzled over the last half hour. A result seemed highly unlikely. For that reason, most of us on the fielding side had become lax. The disinterest had spread to the spectators, those members of the opposition who had either batted or were yet to take the crease. They lounged on the edge of the field like spoilt gentry with nothing better to do with their time.

Marty ran in to complete his over. The batsman stroked the ball into the covers, but it went straight to Rod. Hence there was no attempt to advance the score with a run. Rod, another member of the team who had never been given a chance to bowl, retained the ball. We watched captain Gary consult with the boy keeping wicket. Following their tête-à-tête, Gary called to Rod. "Wanna bowl?"

I had not dreamt that even someone as inconsiderate as this might add insult to injury until Tim had sought my opinion on the bus. In response to the question, Rod, who had been about to release the ball, held on to it and hurried to the bowling crease. Nothing in his comportment implied offence or grievance. From where I stood at point, I exchanged a glance with Tim, fielding at mid-off.

Off a short run-up, Rod sent down a delivery that passed the extended bat of the boy on strike and carried through to the wicket keeper. Gary handed the ball to Tim for the next over. The final delivery of his one and only over for the term was deflected past the fielder at square leg. The batsman on strike and his partner scurried through for two runs before the ball again found the glove of the wicket keeper.

From my more offensive fielding position on the off side, which I had taken up at the captain's behest, I watched Tim walk away from the pitch. The wicket keeper tossed the ball from one gloved hand to another as Gary checked his field placings. "How many overs left, Brother?"

Brother Finian consulted his watch. "Two. Three if we make it snappy."

The captain's eyes roved the field again before coming to rest on me. "Linds." Blithely unconscious of my mute stupefaction, he tossed me the ball. Feeling the hard leather in my hand, I measured out a run-up of several paces and jogged toward the crease. The batsman swung lustily at my delivery but failed to connect. I watched it pass his leg stump on the way through to the wicket keeper, thinking what a pity I had not sent that stump cartwheeling backwards through the air.

***

First mention of the fact that several football teams would represent the school on a competitive basis that winter came at assembly one morning later the same week. Together with about thirty fifth form classmates I sat in a lower level room in the fifth and six formers' block listening to the voice of the senior school principal over a speaker.

"All boys wishing to play football are asked to attend a special meeting in the lecture theatre at twelve o'clock. We're hoping as many as five teams will represent the school this winter."

I gave the boy seated next to me, Bernie, a bemused look. A few minutes after assembly broke up, Tim caught up with me halfway along the corridor outside the rooms. "Goin to the meetin?" I shook my head. "Even you might get a game if there're five teams!" I ignored his trenchant levity. I had picked football as my winter term sport in the past, but now I did not want a bar of it. Early the following week, I ticked the square for squash on the relevant form.

The accent on sport increased with the appointment of the tan, athletic Brother Bill to the position of senior school principal at the start of the year. He would assume the headmastership one year later, taking over from Brother Peter. A new hall and gymnasium – another of Brother Peter's long-term pet projects – was close to completion when someone announced a walkathon.

The event was held on a cold Thursday on the eve of winter. The selected course covered a distance of several miles, south to Keast Park in Carrum and back. I set off that morning with five classmates. We had gone a quarter of the way and were striding along a footpath at the side of Nepean Highway when two of the sixth formers, wearing shorts and running shoes, jogged past.

Five days later, at a special assembly in the senior school quadrangle, a smiling Brother Bill ascended the dais and addressed the gathering through a microphone. "On behalf of Brother Peter, a warm thanks to everyone who participated last Thursday. We won't know the exact amount for a week or two, but at this stage we hope to have raised in excess of $13,000!"

A lively round of applause met the announcement. Brother Bill then carried on, grinning again. "With that sort of money, the new gymnasium will be state of the art!" More applause followed. "There are two boys whose efforts last Thursday I'd like to particularly commend. They ran to Keast Park and back!" The two sixth formers who managed this feat climbed the rostrum to a fervent ovation. Brother Bill received them with hearty claps on the back.

Three or four years had elapsed since the college had last performed outstandingly at the combined Catholic Colleges' Athletics Carnival, an event held every spring. I had witnessed one of the pre-eminent teams in action, either as a first or second former. In the hope that this might aid in bringing about a return to the halcyon days, a novel strategy was devised. On the day this was to be put in place, Brother Bill stressed the fact at morning assembly.

"Fifth formers are reminded that athletics at Dolomore Oval will replace the normal sports this afternoon. Boys are asked to assemble in the quadrangle after lunch." We left for the oval at the end of the lunch hour. The venue was a short walk from the grounds, located near where Warrigal Road intersected the Nepean Highway.

A tall wire fence surrounded a running track of reasonable quality. On the western perimeter were the dressing rooms. We exchanged our uniforms for an anomalous assortment of old shirts, shorts and running shoes, whatever we had succeeded in dredging up. Few among us, that I could tell, remotely resembled athletes. When it came my turn to line up on the track for the first time, I was rubbing shoulders with about a dozen other boys. Brother Finian fired a gun to send us on our way.

Three of the teachers stood waiting at the finish line 150 yards away. One held a stopwatch and a clipboard with several sheets of paper attached. He wrote down the name and time of the winner and the name of the second place getter, both of whom concluded the event puffing hard, hands on hips. The teachers sounded them out on their availability for intensive training over the coming weeks, leaving the rest of us to scatter.

I joined Tim on the grass at the side of the track and watched another group of fifth formers mosey on over to the start, preparatory to the commencement of their 150-metre dash. Everyone participated in three events that afternoon, a 150-metre run and two longer outings, the second of these a run of approximately 600 metres.

Halfway through my 600-metre event, no clear leader had emerged. I was one of five boys at the head of a bunched field. Rounding the final bend, the pace increased as the leading runners surged toward the finish. I stepped up my turnover rate too in an effort to stay within reach of a red-haired boy. I glanced at his face, creased with consummate effort. I kept up with him and the others in the leading pack until near the line, when my pace dropped back to the tempo of earlier.

I came in a couple of yards behind the leaders. Tim and the rest of the field crossed behind me. Tim, almost breathless, looked at me as though to ask how I could have died on my run so emphatically. Also blowing hard from the exertion, I made no attempt to enlighten him.

When I first saw Tony Richardson's black and white film of _The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner_ on television years later, I felt tremendous empathy for Tom Courtenay's reform school rebel, whose life of dissension reaches a glorious summit when he deliberately throws the race for which his 'betters' have groomed him and for which he is overwhelming favourite. I understood his psychology perfectly.

***

The Dolomore Oval tryouts were not our first experience of mandatory running at the college. More than once in the lower forms we were presented the challenge of running north along Beach Road to the Beaumaris Hotel and back. I regarded these assignments with much the same distaste that I did the majority of things imposed. But during my leaving certificate year I accepted with much better grace a long-distance mission of a different cast.

The excursions of the past had been limited to a few days. The sheer length of the seventeen-day extravaganza planned for us in fifth form was one of the reasons it was as anticipated a trip as any that a group of students at the school had embarked on. Approximately eighty of us, together with five or six teachers and some other adults, set off in the first week of July on a journey to South Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales.

Mum and Dad met the comparatively high cost levied, facilitating my participation. I spared a thought for less fortunate classmates who missed out and instead were fated to spend the semester break at home. With our departure set for the evening, I checked my bags for the last time late in the afternoon and then left the house with Mum. At the side of the school, waiting to climb aboard the coaches, I introduced her to several of my friends.

The night and the following morning established a mould we would repeat again and again. We stopped to stretch our legs just twice on the drive to Adelaide, the South Australian capital, finally pulling into our destination around six o'clock and breakfasting an hour or so later at a camping ground. The condition of one of our party, questionable to begin with, deteriorated during the transit and became grave enough to necessitate hospitalisation in the city of churches.

But with a brutal schedule to adhere to we had no choice but to leave him behind with one of the brothers. As we proceeded into the South Australian, Northern Territory and Queensland outback, our two drivers often covered distances of 500 kilometres or more in one sitting, interrupting the journeying for meal breaks or to visit sites of note. In parts of South Australia the roads were slippery and muddy. More than once we disembarked en masse and with a combined effort push started the stranded vehicles.

The passages from one nightly destination to another regularly ballooned to as many as twelve hours. We arrived at our resting points so late some evenings that it was an effort to shake off our weariness and prepare our sleeping bags for what was left of the night. Once, worn out, we stayed put on the bus till daybreak rather than shudder in the outback chill.

Travelling from Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory, to Mt Isa, across the border in the state of Queensland, we brought the night riding to an end around ten o'clock, near Frewena. We established camp, in a manner of speaking, by the road. Few of us went to the trouble of pitching tents. For a distance of hundreds of kilometres all around, no places of consequence existed. We could have heard a pin drop for much of the star bright night.

We welcomed the few days when we were spared the ordeal of travelling into the night to conserve time, but at no stage of the fortnight and a half could we slacken the momentum. Arriving in Bundaberg, on the central Queensland coast, languor weighed heavy and motion sickness had become a daily reality. At a rest stop in the city, we were not even inclined to take the mild afternoon air until one of the teachers insisted we seize the chance.

Our instructors appeared in an altered light during the trip. Away from the classroom environment, they were more like friends than authority figures on constant sentinel. We enjoyed the novelty of addressing them less formally, employing their Christian names instead of the neutral 'sir' or 'brother'. The probability that we would revert to the norm after the trip hardly mattered.

We drew into Sydney, the New South Wales capital and the country's largest metropolis, about six o'clock in the evening on the second to last day. Those in charge let us loose in Kings Cross, the red light district, for two hours. Later that night we set up camp in ethnically diverse Cabramatta, eighteen miles west of the city centre.

I felt queasy. The thought that I might be ill at this stage of the journey miffed. I had stood up to the rigours of the past fifteen days as well as anyone. I put the nausea down to some fast food eaten in the Cross and was thankful my stomach troubled me less as the night wore on.

We spent our last day in Sydney, taking a train into the city's central business district. We faced no restrictions that morning and afternoon and rendezvoused downtown around nightfall to commence the final leg of the trip, an overnight drive to Melbourne.

The cold, grey sky blanketing the city on our re-entry was familiar. Yes, we had returned home. But there would be no time to sit back and let the experience sink in. Classes for the second semester commenced the next morning. The debility that appeared in Sydney caught up with me later in the week, though it manifested as something altogether different to the Sydney stomach upset.

The doctor diagnosed an ear abscess, for which he prescribed medication and a day home from school. But overall I had come through with flying colours. I possessed the capacity to withstand epics of this nature, unaware that in a few short years I would have valid reason to look back on the trip of July 1974 as a watershed.

We settled down to work again as if our horizons had not broadened a hundredfold. I knew I would receive a good grade in English at year's end. But the same could not be said of a couple of my other subjects, one of these being modern history. With the situation less than clear-cut, it was imperative I did well on the afternoon of our examination. Our teacher, a tall, bespectacled man with auburn hair and a beard to match, amused us with a risqué joke before handing out the papers.

He returned them to us at the follow-up tutorial the next day. My score of thirteen out of fifteen was among the highest, if not the highest, in the class. Making a rapid mental calculation, I realised that this, in addition to a pass grade in an essay, saw me safely to dry land in the subject as a whole.

The year's school duties wound down for me just as Marty launched himself into a period of intense revision for his matriculation exams. There were other exams for me to sit too, but like the modern history test these counted for a small percentage of the final mark. The results for all fifth formers became available a week or so after classes ended for the year.

I entrained to Parkdale one afternoon with the sole aim of picking up my report card. It showed that I had completed the year with two As, two Bs and three Cs. Of no great interest to me at that stage – heaven forbid, we had commenced our summer holidays – were two circulars distributed with the reports. They concerned the impending matriculation year, a looming reality I preferred not to think about.

***

The summer break proved distressingly short. No sooner had the holidays begun than they ended, or so it seemed to me. Late in January I made my way to the school for a meeting of the Higher School Certificate students. This year our numbers included about a dozen females. Girls had been invited to sit their matriculation at the college in the recent past but never in such numbers.

We packed the senior school lecture theatre. Many of our teachers were also present. Brother Bill stood before us, emphasising points. Though wholly serious, his eyes retained a glimmer of the warm expression often to be seen in them.

"Don't doubt it for a second. The year you're about to begin will be extremely difficult, certainly a great deal harder than fifth form. Not all of you will succeed, much as we'd like that to be the case. Some of you will drop out through the year." He looked long into our faces. His voice, which had dropped slightly, rose a register. "But the year won't be entirely one of drudgery. There'll be lighter moments. I'm sure everyone will be glad of them!"

He smiled at the reaction to this. "Before classes begin next Monday, there's the orientation camp. Mr McEvoy will have more to say about that in a moment. I hope you enjoy it and return refreshed next week. Last but by no means least, and this won't be the only time you hear me say this, if any of you experience worries at anytime don't keep them to yourselves. Tell me or one of your teachers." He nodded at Mr McEvoy and made short work of the steps leading to the back of the auditorium.

By this stage in my clandestine battle with authority I had learnt the wisdom of the dictum that if one cannot beat them it is best to join them. Cutting his losses, the enemy of the system determined to do the best he could! The importance of the year for the future was a theme so often drummed into us – augmenting the pressure already felt – that I bought the line. A part of me went on yearning for the acceptance of others.

Had I given credence to omens I might have attributed significance to something that happened on my way home from school early in the first term. I boarded a train at Parkdale Station around two o'clock, alighting at the shabby Frankston terminus half an hour later. The two platforms beneath the rust-coloured tin roof, the kiosk higgledy-piggledy in the middle, the shed beyond the gates, where commuters padlocked bicycles of a morning and picked them up again at the end of their working days, evoked the homespun air of a place time had relinquished altogether.

Whenever possible I continued straight on to the little diesel train that serviced other parts of the peninsula, riding it as far as its first faltering stop, Leawarra Station, a few hundred metres from where we lived on Kiandra Court. A railway station like no other, it consisted of a miniscule platform, a three-sided tin shed with a sloping back and a path to the road running parallel to the track. Loose sand and earth bordered the lines on either side and the back fences of a row of houses hugged the northern edge.

For better or worse the single-carriage diesel – we affectionately termed it 'the bomb train' – ran infrequently. Unless prospective passengers caught the incoming Frankston services that connected with its departures it was necessary to cool the heels or find another way home. This I did on the sunny, late summer afternoon, falling back on a bus that ploughed the route to East Frankston. Someone acquainted with me might have remarked that I looked pastier faced than usual that day, but I did not feel ill and there was no pointer to what would shortly unfold.

The bus wound by Jubilee Park and then inched over the crossing at Hillcrest Road before turning right. I alighted at the nearby stop, made my way back to Hillcrest Road and topped the rise lying between there and the point where the road flattened.

Before a vacant block of land fronted with trees and bushes, I stopped and began gasping for breath. Within seconds a fit of wheezing and coughing brought me to my hands and knees. I gasped with violence but could not for the life of me breathe out. The spasm continued for around half a minute until at last I managed to exhale.

As abruptly as I had been rendered helpless, my breathing returned to normal. I dabbed my streaming eyes, mouth and nose with a handkerchief, retrieved my bag and continued toward home. I would suffer two identical convulsions between then and the following afternoon's doctor's consultation. The second of these afflicted me in the waiting room of the medical premises.

Dr Richards kept a loose grip on a pen while he listened to what had befallen me three times in the space of the past twenty-four hours. They were symptoms, he said, of bronchial asthma. "If it happens again, get him to sit down," he advised Mum.

"What causes it, Doctor?"

"Any number of things can trigger asthma. During an attack, the muscle around the airway contracts and the inner lining becomes inflamed and secretes mucus. The combined actions severely limit the flow of air." He allowed this information to hit home. "As for why this happens ... Unfortunately, it's one of those ailments that's a bit of a mystery." He wrote out a prescription and off we went.

"You've never been allergic to pollen or dust?" asked Poppa when I next saw him. We were alone in the living room, seated at either end of the couch.

"Not as far as I know."

He persisted in trying to puzzle out the malaise. "It's a bugger of a thing. What might help are deep breathing exercises."

He sat forward, lifted his chin, set his spine ramrod straight, placed his hands beneath his rib cage and breathed in deep before exhaling, in a clear demonstration of what he meant. Believing this might be of benefit, I developed the habit of regular deep breathing exercises.

Arriving home from school, instead of going straight inside after reaching the top of the steps, I put down my bag and crossed to the end of the porch. Exactly as taught, I stood tall, lifted my head, placed my hands beneath my rib cage and inhaled through the nose until my lungs were filled to bursting. Holding for a moment I then exhaled through the mouth, carrying on the drill for several minutes.

***

In time I bested the bronchial asthma and was able to concentrate unhindered on the business of the year. My form master and literature teacher was Big Jim, the instructor with whom I had studied English the year before. An individual full of enthusiasm for literature and concerned about the well being and progress of his charges, he interviewed all within weeks of the mid-year exams, the format of which provided a harbinger of what we would face at the final exams come November.

My performance at the mid-year literature test was run of the mill and it was with this in mind that I fronted up on the Monday afternoon of my interview. Jim chewed the fat with his students in one of the upper level rooms in the senior school building. I arrived a couple of minutes early and waited until the teacher completed his chat with another boy.

Room seven was a tutorial room rather than a conventional classroom as such. Two large tables stood end to end, riding hard against them a number of chairs. Our literature tutorials were held here. Jim was sitting with his back to a window that afforded a view of the senior school quadrangle, an open notebook in front of him. I took the chair to his right.

He gazed at me after briefly scanning his notes. "I think you can do a lot better." He allowed a pause. "I know you can!" The implicit faith brought a smile to my face. "Would you agree?"

"I think I can too, sir." Jim looked at me, intuiting that I had something to add. "I found it hard to understand some of the questions." His sustained silence encouraged me to elaborate. "They weren't very clear. I couldn't see what they were driving at, so I wasn't sure what to write."

"The trial exams are in September. That gives you plenty of time to consult some old exam papers. I think it's essential you do that. You could start with last year's and the year before. Then you'll have a good idea of the sorts of questions to expect."

"All right."

"How are you getting on with your study?"

"Mostly I've been reading and re-reading the material." I volunteered this information unsure whether this was the best tactic.

"That's important, especially with the poetry. But it's as important to think about the material. Try to interpret it. That's what the examiners will be looking for."

The other subject in which I fared less than shiningly at mid-year was biology. Not that I stood alone among the sixth form biology students in scoring a mediocre grade. Vincent, our teacher, pushed us harder in the second half of the year. In the weeks leading up to the trial exams, he laid on extra classes every Tuesday afternoon.

During one of these I sat at the table I routinely occupied with my friend Jan and a boy of Chinese extraction by the name of Jackson. Vincent, a small, bearded man, moved back and forth at the front of the classroom as he transmitted his points through his arms and hands. Even when holding the one place, a part of him gestured. He also had a habit of accentuating his vowels as he spoke, especially his a's and i's.

"Don't confuse bile with lipase. Lipase is the fat digesting enzyme of the pancreas. It splits molecules of fat into glycerol and fatty acids. Lipase is the catalyst of almost all fat digestion." The hand and arm signals became more theatrical. "Bile aids in fat digestion. But unlike lipase it's not a digestive enzyme. It's not even a protein. It's a complex solution of bile salts, bile pigments and cholesterol. The bile salts act as an emulsifier, causing large fat droplets to be broken up into numerous tiny droplets."

Thinking of an appropriate analogy, he swung round. "The fat left on a plate after a meal of fish and chips breaks up once that plate is put in a tub of water and dishwashing liquid. Bile salts act much like detergent. Numerous small droplets of fat expose far more surface area to the digestive action of lipase than a few large droplets. Bile salts also aid in the absorption of fats. Do you understand the distinction I'm making?"

He looked toward Jan, Jackson and me. "Jan?" With the tincture of an unconvincing smile, Jan nodded. Nor was I sure I had grasped the concept. The expression on my face must have betrayed the fact. "Jackson?" To the barely suppressed amusement of the three of us, Jackson nodded with a similar lack of assurance. Vincent grinned, evidently convinced the differentiation had sunk in. "Good."

Preparation for the September trial exams coincided with the commencement of Geelong West's campaign in the division one finals series of the Victorian Football Association. They won their way through to the Grand Final, a match due to be played on a Sunday in the middle of the exam block.

The thought of not attending the Grand Final, of prioritising revision instead, never occurred to me for a second. Nothing was going to stand in my way; I would have hitched a ride or walked to the stadium in inner Melbourne if need be. Geelong West easily took out the premiership that day and their success put me in a good spirits for the exam I sat on Monday afternoon – none other than biology.

Alternately seated or standing at the front of the college hall, Vincent played the role of supervisor. Every second or third multiple-choice question on the paper caused a heart flutter. I continually propped my left hand against my forehead, unsure which answer to tick. More than once I checked one space only to think better of it and mark another instead.

The day after the trial exam results were posted I waited for Jan to gather some belongings from his locker on the top floor of the senior block. At the far end of the corridor Vincent left the biology room and strode toward us. He stopped a couple of yards away and we turned to him. "Congratulations on your results, you two!"

He looked from Jan to me and back again. My friend and I kept silent, unaccustomed to being showered with kudos. The gaze that rested on me was shot through with gladness that I had acquitted myself ably. "If you can do so well on the trial exam, you should be able to repeat the effort in November."

I had performed well enough in each one of the trial exams. But my September biology result was never going to lull me into a false sense of security. I considered my pass in the subject as much a result of good luck as good management. The gods would need to be similarly benevolent come November.

***

About three weeks before we attended our last classes for the year, a parent / teacher day was held in the hall. Mum and I did the rounds and after concluding a discussion with Tom, my social studies teacher, joined Big Jim, seated at a table on the other side of the space. Our brief dialogue concluded on a hopeful note.

"I'm sure he'll keep plugging away," said Jim, smiling at Mum.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"If you keep him warm and well-fed you'll be doing more than your share," he replied, with a hint of mischief.

The day after classes ended, the first day of the 'swot vac' period, I journeyed to central Melbourne with Marty. I craved twenty-four hours respite before throwing myself into this intense period of revision. Marty, close to wrapping up his first year of study at Monash University, also looked forward to a break.

He had obtained his driver's licence in February, soon after his eighteenth birthday, and since then had often driven the 'blue flash' – Mum's light blue Corona – on the days that she did not require it for lessons. This being one such day, we headed to the city in style, listening to a cassette tape rather than the bland, predictable fare on the radio waves. Marty often rigged up a cassette player, powering it with a lead inserted in the cigarette lighter socket. Thus we heeded the music of our choice rather than the preferences of smart aleck DJs.

Time permitting we began our forays in the city with an hour or two in a deluxe snooker parlour near the top end of Flinders Street. Midway through our first game that day I reminded Marty about my upcoming exam schedule. He bent over his cue and lined up a shot, but missed the pocket. Studying the arrangement of the multi-coloured balls on the baize cloth and chalking my cue, I went on speaking.

"That makes three in four days. I finish off with biol and social studies the Monday after."

My attempted pot missed. Marty replaced me at the table and again leaned over his cue. "That's what I call a packed programme." He completed his shot but missed the follow-up.

"Gets them over and done with pretty quick at least."

Following the snooker session we picked up some fast food and then went to the cinema. Even at a remove of well over thirty years, I remember the experience with singular clarity. Not unlike the nights of years before, when I trembled at the thought of imagined calamity the next morning, I would have preferred to remain in a form of suspended animation. But life did not operate accordingly.

The darkness in the air-conditioned theatre lifted at the conclusion of the filmmaker's dream and we reacquainted ourselves with the bright late afternoon light. I solaced myself with the thought that maybe, as on those long ago days, things would not turn out so fearfully.

At the federal political level, the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam and the opposition were enmeshed in a constitutional crisis that reached its culmination on Tuesday, November 11, in the midst of the second and final week of my revision period. The beginning of the exams was exactly a week away.

Dressed in casual clothes and carrying an armful of textbooks, with no idea of the latest manoeuvres in Canberra, I left for school that afternoon. I went straight to the library, mounting the stairs to the mezzanine floor, an area reserved for the sixth formers. Tim and Gerard, a boy of Sri Lankan heritage with a winning smile, looked up from their notebooks.

"Heard the news?" Tim asked in his customary burr.

"What news?" I freed my arms.

"Your hero Whitlerham's got the chop."

A student of social studies, I had followed the events closely over the past few weeks. A possibility aired early on was that the governor-general, the British monarch's representative in Australia, might intervene and resolve the crisis by dismissing the elected government, but few people, least of all me, seriously believed this would be the upshot.

Enraged and bewildered, I absorbed every detail of the day's events, including the demonstrations the sacking sparked, on the television news and prime time current affairs shows that evening. Not for a second could I block thoughts of the vehement protests the dismissal engendered. It was against this backdrop that I sat the exams in the college hall.

English literature followed two days after English – the habitual opener every year. Almost two and a half hours into the literature test, I had written a token amount. A glance at the nearest students showed that the lassitude afflicting me was not general. My fellow examinees were writing feverishly whereas I had penned less than half a page on the question I was then occupied with. My answers to the other questions I had attempted were almost as paltry.

At the termination, the supervisor began collecting our papers. I handed mine to her. Over the last half hour I added little, sensing that the cause was well and truly lost. Outside the hall, for want of anything better to do, I joined a group talking shop with Father Hodgson. A popular figure, he held the post of college chaplain and also taught literature, among other subjects.

"There hasn't been a question on that since 1972. Now it probably won't rate a mention for a couple of years." He smiled. "I thought it might be on the paper this time. But it's impossible to know for certain. Who was asking about the Brecht?" Two of the boys spoke up. "If you have a moment, I can find out for you. You'll be anxious to get home, but it won't take a minute."

The interested students duly followed the college chaplain. A conversation began among the rest of us. My thoughts running wild, I paid divided attention. In the space of six days, late the following Monday afternoon, everything came to an end. As I left the hall and walked to the car park out front, I set much store on the advent of summer. The horizon promised little else.

Mum and Marty were waiting for me. I went straight into the back seat of the Corona, behind my brother, sitting tall by the controls. That night the Australian Labor Party opened its campaign for the election that had been called for mid-December with a rally at Festival Hall in the inner city. We were keen to attend. The long drive was a price we happily paid.

After we turned onto Nepean Highway, I brought my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, submersed with fatigue. Gazing at me from the front passenger seat, Mum again asked about the two exams I had sat that day, unfailing hope and enthusiasm in her voice. "You think you did okay?"

"I'm sure I passed social. Biol ... might be a close thing."

As I awaited the warmer clime of summer, I knew in my heart of hearts that both the dismissed Whitlam government and I would need inordinate luck to extricate ourselves from our respective predicaments. In the middle of the evening on election day, while the rest of us continued viewing the results on television, Mum prepared a snack. The mood in which we ate and drank was sombre, the outcome by this time having become conclusive.

The Malcolm Fraser led Liberal / National Country Party coalition were recording a landslide victory. The moment one of the election broadcast's anchormen at the Canberra national tally room appeared on screen to verify the fact, Mum blurted with derision and took to her feet. She could stomach no more of the transmission.

***

About a month later, six and a half weeks after the exams, I was at home with Marty and Mum. It was lunchtime, around the hour when our curly-haired postman ordinarily delivered the day's mail. I sat awaiting my fate in the living room. At the slightest sound from the street, I pricked up my ears.

Unable to remain stationary a moment longer, I crossed to the window overlooking the base of the court. Peeking through the slats of the Venetian blind, I eyed the postman standing over his bicycle at the letterbox in front of the house opposite. I watched him leave some mail for our neighbour, blow his whistle and begin riding up the court.

Mum descended the stairs and met him with an expectant smile when he braked to a stop in front of her about a minute later. The strong mid-summer breeze audibly soughed, mussing her short hair. She took the solitary letter he handed over; there were no other pieces of mail to steal my thunder. His duty done, the postie resumed his round and Mum about-faced and walked up the drive toward the steps.

I moved to the centre of the living room and waited for her to reappear. Pass or fail, pass or fail, I kept thinking to myself when I took the envelope and settled on the edge of the couch. I tore the seal. The raw details of my marks in the five subjects could wait. All I desired to know straight off was whether I had matriculated or not.

***

It was the latter. I passed social studies and Australian history but failed English, biology and English literature, the first two by a meagerly handful of marks, literature by a whopping twenty-five. To have botched this paper by such a margin caused grief. Big Jim was one teacher I liked and respected. Dwelling on his commitment through the year, the feeling that I had let him down became more acute. But I knew equal parts disgust that the pressures of the year erased much of the pleasure intrinsic to literature and writing.

Though I began the New Year on this astringent note, salvation of a kind lay close. It was, of course, deliverance long overdue. Through thirteen years of schooling the cloud that hung over my existence had grown progressively denser. Without doubt, a heavy onus fell on one who failed to adapt to the system.

In the days immediately following the arrival of my results I took inventory. Rather than make a hasty decision, I tried to enjoy the summer break in the traditional ways. I swam at the beach on the warmer days and also made several day trips to Melbourne. I thought it possible someone might proffer an unforeseen solution to my dilemma.

Later in the month, I arranged an outing to the city with Jan. I stood up the moment the silver train pulled into Caulfield Station, opening one of the doors of the carriage on which I had embarked down the line. Jan gave me the playful, wide-eyed stare with which he often met people with whom he enjoyed good relations.

I would not celebrate my eighteenth birthday for another three months. Jan himself was just about to reach the magic number. Undaunted, we earmarked an R-certificate film. I had gained entrance to a couple of them in the recent past, the first at the tender age of sixteen in the company of Marty. Both times I was allowed in without having to present proof of my age.

The main attraction that day held true to the soft-core exposé type. In the context of a country supposedly still coming of age sexually, the concept and execution was humorous. The sketches were mildly stimulating in part, perhaps none more so than the sequences with which the movie closed. In exquisite close-up they depicted a young woman naked as the day she was born executing graceful turns and other moves underwater.

"Shouldn't you be thinking about what you're going to do?" Mum asked me around the time. I removed the headphones through which I was listening to a record on the living room stereo. Her question possessed more the flavour of a suggestion than a reproach, but it underlined my quandary. I realised she was right and agreed to the proposal that I meet with the spouse of one of my cousins, a woman who worked in the tertiary education field.

How exactly she might be of help no one could say, but I thought some good might result from a chat. Janet worked at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, at the top of Swanston Street in the heart of the city. We met briefly in her office and then immersed ourselves in the lunchtime crowds.

"I hope your grandfather likes it," she said, paying for a generic purchase at a department store. Poppa's birthday was two to three weeks away. "I never know what to buy people for their birthdays."

We returned to the street and reprised the subject of my options.

"You came close. You could go back to college and repeat." The idea had occurred. I winced, however, hearing it voiced.

"I don't want to do that."

We walked a little way in silence. "Have you heard of the tertiary orientation programme?" I had not. Janet told me about RMIT's version. But before enrolling in the course I conversed, on her recommendation, with a careers advisor, a quietly spoken blonde with a sliver of a North American accent. She asked me if there was a career I had in mind.

"I'd like to write."

"Oh!"

"Novels ... stories ..."

"Oh, that's not so easy." I waited for her to expand. "I mean it's different to ... wanting to be a teacher, for instance. If that was your ambition, I could tell you what qualifications you need." I acknowledged this with the barest movement of my head. "Have you written anything to date?"

"Not yet. I've written things for school, of course. But nothing else, so far."

"It can't be an easy thing to become successful at. I guess it must require a lot of patience and hard work. Don't many writers have to hold down other jobs?"

"I don't really know. I suppose they do." We appeared to have reached a standstill.

"I wish you luck."

"Thanks."

The tertiary orientation programme, in contrast to the Higher School Certificate, took into account a student's performance throughout the entire year and was bound to better suit someone as workmanlike as me. Soon after enrolling in the RMIT course, I heard about a similar one on offer at the local technical college. I made the rational selection within days.

Now I was free to muse on the question of how I might set about finding myself. The newfangled school environment would mean new friends and acquaintances and in other respects entail a decisive split with the past. I wondered how it would feel to be in proximity to girls again for the first time since primary school.

Essentially, they were a mystery; the opportunities to meet them on their terms had been few. On my father's side of the family, there were several female cousins. Yet some of them were native Queenslanders. The others might as well have lived interstate given they had been born and bred in my parents' and older brother's hometown of Geelong. The driving distance from the head of the Mornington Peninsula to Corio Bay precluded frequent get-togethers.

I might have regarded girls my own age as well nigh unapproachable, but in truth I was not immune to their charms even from a young age. At primary school, on the day my classmates and I took our first communion, I exchanged a smile with one of the girls when she genuflected near the altar rail, thinking how comely she looked in her transparent veil.

It soon became evident that less separated 'us' from 'them' than I had been wont to believe. Once a school year commenced at primary school, it was rare that a new face appeared. And with just the occasional coming or going, one's classmates remained the same from grade to grade. In that her parents enrolled her at the school in a later grade, Bernice proved an exception to the rule.

She may have first appeared among us when the relevant year was partway advanced. Word went round that she had fifteen siblings, a claim to fame in its own right. One day she arrived late – it was a bad habit of hers – announcing herself with a timorous knock on the partly open door. Sister Bernadette, out of sorts that morning, glanced across the room with a pained expression. "Come in."

Bernice made her entrance. "Sorry I'm late, Sister."

"Go to your place." The chastened one went straight to her desk, whispering a few words to her neighbour in the act of sitting. Unfortunately for Bernice, Sister's hearing was sounder than her sight. "Stand up!" Bernice rose. "Why are you late again?"

"I missed the bus, Sister."

The nun glowered. "Is there something wrong with you that you're late so often?" Bernice said nothing. "Is there?"

"No, Sister."

"If it happens again, I'll speak to your parents and you can stay back at the end of the day."

"Yes, Sister."

Not for a second did Sister Bernadette look away from the girl, who stood hands joined behind her back in conspicuous discomfort.

"Haven't I told you not to wear that jumper?"

"Yes, Sister."

"Come here!" Bernice, her cheeks aflame, left her place. The rest of us watched the scene spellbound. I lowered my head when Bernice stopped before the irate nun, who sized up her mode of dress – not the regulation school uniform, but more than likely the one she had sported at her old school. "How dare you come to class day after day dressed in that! You're a disgrace, girl! An absolute disgrace! You're a disgrace to the school! I've a good mind to send you home this instant!"

Bernice returned to her desk on the far side of the room. Then, to the shock of everyone and without forewarning, Shirley, one of the other girls, upped and rushed out the door, leaving a trail of urine droplets on the wooden floor. Sister made a point of looking for herself.

"Maree, go and see she's all right." Maree went on her way. Sister Bernadette turned to Patrick, a boy seated at the front of the first row. "Bring the mop from the corridor." He left the room to carry out the order. The stir the incidents of the last couple of minutes had caused began subsiding.

***

In the early seventies, days after outlining the facts of life to Marty, Dad knocked on the door of the room I shared with Chris early one wet evening and entered without waiting for an invite. Chris and I were reclining on our beds, entangled in homework or otherwise passing the time. Dad crossed to the window and took a gander at the rain.

"Whoa! Send her down, Huey boy!"

"What are you here for, Dad?" Chris asked purely for form's sake. He and I both knew we were about to be given the all-important 'talk', the due of all youngsters on the verge of puberty. Dad straddled the end of my brother's bed and playfully grasped his left ankle. "I'm here to tell you something." We put down our reading material and waited for him to begin.

I listened with not a little amazement to the weird scenario he outlined over the next twenty minutes. So, this is the kernel of what we've gotten ourselves into, I thought to myself. Only a wag with a perverse sense of humour could have conjured up such a state of affairs. Not for the first time, I sensed that 'someone' was trying their darndest to pull the wool over our eyes and that unless we were vigilant we would go through life hoodwinked.

His paternal duty done, Dad departed. Chris and I returned to our books. Not that we could do so as if everything was the same as it had been prior to the chitchat. Unquestionably, that was not the case. This life appeared loaded. Would it forever be comprised of traps concealed in sticky undergrowth through which one had to creep blindly?

As time went by my interest in such realms burgeoned in spite of myself. When we moved to East Frankston in 1968, Marty, Chris and I, with or without other kids from the neighbourhood, roamed in more space than we had been used to, sometimes deep in the untamed thickets that lay close. With the tarring of the road, a median strip at the bottom of the court became a favoured playing area of a Saturday and Sunday.

Now and again in those early years, a young couple stepped through the front door of one of the houses overlooking the place where we rollicked, stood leaning against the side of the man's Holden, put their arms around each other and began kissing, as oblivious to our rowdiness as we were, to all intents and purposes, of their less disruptive presence. Shy but inherently curious, I sometimes showed more than passing interest in their amorous sport.

Television, that treacherous friend par excellence, also played a central role in demystifying this other world. It had become not uncommon in our household for the evening meal to be taken in the company of the incessantly chattering pest. If some of the advertisements and programmes that began airing in the early seventies were an accurate pointer, a permissive age of unprecedented proportions loitered round the corner.

One memorable example, an ad for soft drink, featured slowed down footage of a man and a woman moving into an open mouthed kiss. While at a loss to know what a can of soft drink might have to do with a kiss of that kind – before or post-kiss refreshment, or another connection? – I gaped in wonder when I saw the advert for the first time. Mum, Dad and my brothers probably shared my incredulity, none of us having witnessed anything so explicit on the black and white screen.

By and large, I disregarded a brand of magazine visible on the racks every time I entered a newsagency. But one Saturday morning, left to my own devices, I walked to a retailer on a busy street about a mile and a half to two miles from home. I had rehearsed the action mentally for sometime and now the moment was opportune.

I picked up a copy of that day's edition of the _Sun_ and then crossed to the other side of the newspaper and magazine stand. Keeping one eye on the girlie magazines, I brought the newspaper under the crook of my left arm and then, making sure no one was watching, reached for a copy of _Playgirl_. Nonchalant, I began flicking through the glossy colour representations of naked or scantily dressed women. Their variations on the seductive and sultry poses typical of the genre ran the gamut.

Following a brief perusal, I replaced the magazine on the shelf. Moments later, certain the proprietor was engaged with other customers, I leaned over. Putting down the newspaper, I picked up the copy of _Playgirl_ and inserted it among the pages of the _Sun_. I straightened and folded the paper until it appeared as if I was carrying nothing else. Satisfied with the attempted concealment, I went to the counter and handed the unsuspecting owner enough copper to cover the cost of the _Sun_.

I went to such drastic lengths so relatively far from home only because the milk bar / sub-newsagency close to Leawarra Station had changed hands. The new overseer, a wiry, bespectacled middle-aged man, gave short shrift to any boy dawdling around the stock of girlie mags. One day he invaded my space more than usual.

"Are you gonna buy that?"

"No."

"Get a move on then. This isn't a library, you know."

Much as I may have pined to browse this kind of material undisturbed in the local library, nothing remotely resembling it could be unearthed there, needless to say. Yet an unexpected pleasure came to light in the form of a coffee table size hardcover tome on photography. On successive Tuesday afternoons, I alighted the train in Frankston and instead of heading home made for the cramped municipal library in Central Car Park. There I passed an hour or so until it was time for work at a Caltex service station a couple of minutes away by foot. Marty and I bolstered our pocket money working there several hours a week.

The library burst at the seams with books and space for seating was at a premium. If lucky I scored one of the carrels on the same side as the building entrance. The photography book featured many arty black and white shots of busty nude women, some of them in various stages of pregnancy. Though not nearly as titillating as those in _Playgirl_ , I examined them at length whenever I found the book on the shelves of a Tuesday. I much preferred this form of 'study' to my school assignments.

In a Melbourne bookstore a few years later, I would encounter some portraits wielding a far greater impact. In a series of single black and white frames, they illustrated a couple making love, notably a muscular, square shouldered man licking the sex of a woman. The photographer foregrounded in equal measure the man's not to be denied avidity and his partner's febrile ecstasy, signalled in her flailing arms and head. I could almost taste the nectar oozing from the sacrosanct place between her thighs.

***

Visual renderings of this ilk underlined the fact that Adam and Eve had stumbled on something. Did my own inner stirrings not tell me as much? But I was unconvinced, as I always was when confronted with something in vogue in this world. Enchanting as I found the female form when presented in this light – the nubile _Playgirl_ models first and foremost – I could no more equate them with any flesh and blood girl or woman I knew than I could relate soft drink to open mouthed kisses.

Perhaps every boy or girl was armed with the facts of life on the proviso that for an unspecified period of time he or she would only be allowed to go so far with them. Many adults were quite capable, like the newsagency proprietor, of putting a damper on a lad's inquisitiveness. On an evening around the same time Dad sat watching television from the comfort of 'his' armchair. I, true to his example, was perched at the living room table turning the pages of the _Herald_.

I could see neither the screen nor my progenitor though the television sounded as obtrusive as it often did to my delicate ears. I heard the national news bulletin end and its companion piece in this hour of sober viewing – the current affairs show _This Day Tonight_ – begin. The introductory theme of the latter was followed by the voice of the host, Bill Peach.

"Tonight, later in the show, a report on prostitution in St Kilda. But first ... " The rest of Bill's spiel went in one ear and out the other. Hooked, I released the broadsheet and took a place on the couch, positioned at a sharp diagonal across from Dad's chair. He left my appearance unremarked until I settled.

"Do you normally watch this programme?"

"No."

"I don't think you should start tonight."

I did not argue the point; I was hardly in the habit where adults were concerned, especially my parents and teachers. In effect, the staunchly masculine atmosphere of secondary school was unconducive to developing an interest in the fair gender. The De La Salle brothers at college and not a few of the male lay teachers as well consisted of many rough as diamonds characters happy to back up verbal harangues with the strap.

The few females among the lay teaching staff did not come close to tempering the overall pitch. In the sporting arena, the matey diehards football and cricket reigned supreme among the abundance of options. Even so, as if in recognition of the unnaturalness of the environment, contact with girls our age was encouraged up to a point.

In the middle and higher forms dances were a calendar item. Many of the invitees were from well-to-do girls' colleges in the Mentone area. During third term in fifth form, I participated in a series of ten dancing lessons held at the recently opened school hall as an extra curricular activity every Thursday afternoon.

Partnered by girls from Kilbreda College, we formed a large circle around the circumference of the hall and watched our instructor demonstrate steps and entreat us to copy them. We did so with differing degrees of success, under not only his watchful eye but also that of teachers from both colleges. The latter skulked non-stop around the sidelines like security personnel at a nightclub.

My partner for one particular sequence, a blonde almost as tall as me, maintained an insipid grip, like she resented being held. I tried to keep to the letter of the instructor's directions but found her unwilling to follow my lead. We must have personified ungainliness to the bystanders, among them Brother Paul, who stood looking on with a sardonic expression.

The instructor stopped the music and brought his hands together to attract our attention. Wryly thinking this was one 'breda' I would gladly have done away with, I released her and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. The instructor was pontificating on another point when Brother Paul leaned close. "Show her who's boss!"

Not every lesson were as heavy-duty as this one. There was some easy, albeit brief, banter and on another Thursday I met Judy, the younger sister of Frank, with whom I had remained close friends since second form. I would accompany her to a dance at the hall early the following year.

Outside the regimented environs, on the train to and from school for example, we could in theory do as we pleased though in itself the navy blue school uniform implied parameters. Once in a while someone turned my head and I liked the look of several of the Mordialloc High School girls who rode the same train of a morning, disembarking at the stop one before Parkdale.

There were also times when someone gave me sidelong, or more direct, scrutiny. But of course I was much too shy and unsure of myself to initiate conversation, or respond to low-key expressions of interest, beyond the concession of a smile. I contented myself with admiring from a distance.

The most popular among the girls who studied at the college for their matriculation year in 1975 was one whose friendly deportment, long, honey-blonde hair and voluptuous curves were custom-made to grab the headlines. The robust young body of this girl-woman embraced every contour of her green and white cotton duds.

I would have liked nothing more than to gaze into that pretty face and chat with her, but being such a polite, well-mannered, respectful boy I held my distance and let those more naturally made for schmoozing mince to their heart's content. Maybe one day what I felt might gel into a strong liking for this once perplexing sex. Fascinated though I may have been with the _Playgirl_ pics, there was really not much carnal about the attraction.

Mum remained the unquestionable dominant female presence in my life. Whatever momentous transformations might manifest in other areas, this constant would not likely undergo radical adjustment for the time being. But ingrained independent streaks in my brothers and me ensured we never took advantage of her solicitude. We simply accepted it, much as we bowed to Dad's sterner, less accommodating manner. They sat at opposite ends of a somewhat precariously balanced ledger.

# 
**Part Three: The Day of the Lizard**

Running, too, was a mystery. It immediately placed a non-routine burden on the heart, washing away the emotions of the daily round. Before long, my blood would not permit a halt of even a day or two. Something ceaselessly set me to work; my body could no longer tolerate indolence, but began instantly to thirst for violent action, forever urging me on. Thus for many a day I led a life that others might well dismiss as frenzied obsession. From the gymnasium to the fencing school, from the school to the gymnasium ... My solace lay more than anywhere – indeed lay solely – in the small rebirths that occurred immediately after exercise. Ceaseless motion, ceaseless violent deaths, ceaseless escape from cold objectivity – by now, I could no longer live without such mysteries. And – needless to say – within each mystery there lay a small imitation of death.

Yukio Mishima _Sun and Steel_

I am the Lizard King. I can do anything.

James Douglas Morrison The Celebration of the Lizard

Twelve months on I had not forgotten the bout of bronchial asthma suffered during first term of my final year's schooling at Mentone. I never endured a recurrence but went on following the advice Poppa offered at the time.

I believed an exercise like running – the activity I disdained when it was forced on us at college – would accomplish essentially the same thing as the deep breathing routine. Also lurking in the back of my mind was the thought that with the season about to begin I might try out for a local football club. Running would be an ideal way to acquire fitness.

The commencement of classes at the local technical college was still a week away when I awoke one morning and searched in my wardrobe. I could find nothing more suitable than an old cotton top, cotton shorts and a pair of sandals. Dressed in this gear I tread into the kitchen, where Dad stood at the sink washing dishes. He glanced round, mystified at my outfit.

"I'm heading on a run."

His gaze dropped to my footwear. "In those?"

"Yeah."

He laughed, tolerantly. "Haven't you got anything better than them?" I shook my head. "Grab my old sandshoes downstairs. They should fit."

The shoes he was referring to were on the bottom rung of the workbench. I tied the laces tight and jogged a few paces to make sure they would do. Satisfied, I went on my way, glancing up at the clear early morning sky. A warm summer's day was in the offing. I checked the time and set off at the point where our driveway intersected the bitumen.

I continued to the right after covering several yards and proceeded at a moderate clip along undulating Wallace Avenue. There were few vehicles and fewer people out and about. I made a circuit of a vacant block of land half a mile away and commenced the return leg. I moved with ease, a light film of perspiration breaking out. Pulling up near the point where I started, my chest slowly expanded and contracted.

***

At the local technical college I appreciated the fact that I could attend school wearing the clothes of my choice; we had rarely been allowed to come to the Mentone college in mufti. That luxury was only extended on days when the regular curricular was not observed. I often walked the distance from home to my new school, the better part of two miles, but I preferred to go by bicycle, locking it for the duration of classes in a roofless enclosure on the grounds. It was ritually unlocked at a specific time late of an afternoon though access could be gained out of hours if necessary.

Compared to the nuns, brothers and lay teachers who had been responsible for my schooling up to then, the technical college staff were the most unperturbed of customers. "The timetable will be available this afternoon. I should think about one o'clock," said Alan, the coordinator of the tertiary orientation programme. He glanced at one of his colleagues, seeking verification. "You're free till then. And once you know your class times you can go home or to the beach or do whatever you like! Enjoy the afternoon. Tomorrow it's down to business."

Together with the other inductees, I was in the college hall, on the ostensible first day of the year. Alan, a rangy, gaunt man with prominent, slightly bloodshot eyes closed his orientation speech with a friendly smile. Having attended to administrative matters and completed the mandatory paperwork, we went our separate ways.

The coordinator's maverick manner exemplified the teaching staff as a whole. My English teacher, a pipe-wielding young man little older than us, signalled his intent early in the first term. For much of the time he left us to private reading from the texts on the syllabus rather than taught as such.

At every tutorial we sat waiting for him to take the lead. But instead of doing that he smoked – or relit – his pipe with trembling hands. He wanted us to decide the purpose of each day's lesson, as if the obligation was as much in our court as it was his. New to such a laissez-faire teaching methodology, we rarely came up with anything.

My modern European history teacher – my replacement European history teacher, I should say – also stood out. Most of the tertiary orientation programme's classes were held at an office suite in the heart of town rather than the college campus. It was here that I attended European history and three of my other four classes.

Bryan, the substitute history teacher, a middle-aged chain smoker with a gravelly voice, took a place at a table in one of the larger suites and dictated at a furious rate of knots to the five or six enrollees who had rashly opted for this elective. He would break from the dictation every couple of minutes or so to take another prodigious drag from the cigarettes that never left his hand for long.

If ever someone uttered the semblance of a complaint about the speed of his dictation, he made a sarcastic remark and went merrily on his way, making things even harder if he could. One of the other students, an older man with a physical disability, experienced out-and-out difficulty keeping up.

The original teacher, also a middle-aged man, had at least appeared to merit the designation. During the first lesson he conducted he made a point of inviting each of us to introduce ourselves. But he disappeared a week or two later, never to be seen or heard from again. He absconded with a colleague, an attractive younger woman. I had seen her in and around the building but knew little about her or which subjects she taught. Now they had both gone.

What was this outlandish force that persuaded them to abandon their jobs and summarily flee who knew where? How powerful 'it' obviously was if it could impel a couple to abandon not only their careers but also, I presumed, much else. Would this power one day descend on me with the same potency, obliging me to act in like manner, perhaps against my will? Were all adults, at first glance so sure of themselves, putty in its hands?

I hoped I would carry more consistency and strength of character into the sphere of adulthood when I reached that point in life. Genial as I found the first European history teacher, the action he and his paramour took seemed beyond the pale. The more I saw of supposed human love in action the more sceptical I became.

The gentle woman who was our next door neighbour in East Frankston ultimately preferred suicide to furtherance of life with her philandering spouse. Sometime later, the woman who resided with her husband and three children in the house opposite on the same court followed the identical road out of a degrading marriage. But when the crunch came would I be able to resist that undeniable might?

***

On a seminal late summer day at the end of February, I finished classes for the morning at midday and left the office suite. Sitting on a bench in the grassy area near the library opposite, about to tuck into the sandwiches he had brought for lunch that day, was Colin, a boy I recognised from one of my classes. A strong intuition that he would become one of the best of my new friends would soon be borne out.

But the cultivation of new friendships could wait. I left the shopping precinct and crossed the main highway to the beach. Arriving at Gould Street, I followed it to the right for a quarter mile before turning down a path leading to the foreshore. The sky formed an almost metallic blue vault. The motionless air touching my skin felt deliciously warm. Barely a ripple skimmed the surface of Port Phillip Bay.

The section of beach I halted at was deserted except for three lunchtime bathers, among them a young woman. She sat sunning herself close to the water's edge, her back erect, thighs drawn in toward her breasts. I stripped down to my swimming trunks and padded across the hot sand, passing the stranger. The water electrified my skin with the genius of a caress.

The tide was in on that sunburnt midday, the water ran deep close to shore. I submerged my head and began swimming underwater. I surveyed the aqua world below for half a minute or more, surfacing in response to my lungs' exhortation. Away to the left, two men stood in water about three or four feet deep. I blinked the element from my eyes and heard them converse in dulcet tones.

I homed in again on the shapely young woman. Sunglasses balanced on the bridge of her nose hid her eyes from view, but I could tell she was fixated on everything happening in front of her. This thought, in combination with the sublime contact of the water, sent waves of sensuality pulsing through me. For her, for her alone, I went below the surface again and performed a slow somersault.

I resurfaced seconds later, breathed in quickly and submerged myself again, this time completing a backflip. I carried out a third manoeuvre after glancing at my rapt audience of one. Convinced of her ministration, thrilled by the thought of it, the feeling culminated at the height of this last movement in an unforced, sustained ejaculation. I resumed a standing position and trailed both hands in the water, my chest near to bursting. Moments later I regained the sand.

The sky had begun clouding over in the distant southwest – pointer to an impending cool change – when I left the beach. I traipsed to a small room on the college grounds. Rick, our politics teacher, had asked us to attend a screening of the American film _The Candidate_. The smell of brine filling my nostrils, I struggled to make head or tail of the painfully longwinded movie and Robert Redford's role in it.

I found some of my female classmates attractive and often appreciated what I came to know of their characters. But unsure how to break the ice with a member of the opposite sex, my efforts to this end were tentative. Walking home from school, if ever I intentionally unintentionally crossed paths with one of the three or four from the same locality, I attempted a chat, believing an approach of this kind to be better than none.

Yet remoteness often held sway. I would think of the 'velleities and carefully caught regrets' in the poem by T. S. Eliot. Girls were besieged with problems peculiar to themselves. Had I not witnessed this firsthand at primary school? As teenagers, perhaps those tribulations were exacerbated.

In any case, few possessed the intrepidness of Sue, a marginally older student who proudly trumpeted the multiplicity of locales where she had succeeded in enjoying sex in her young life. One notable omission, I heard, which she aimed to make up for when she found a suitor, was the beach. Gaining wind of this, I thought ruefully that I could have told her a thing or two.

My 'dharma' lay elsewhere for the moment, distant from morbid preoccupation with sex. Toward the end of March, with autumn advancing, I caught a city-bound train to Kananook Station, midway between Frankston and Seaford. Regarding a local football club, I fielded two choices, a team that competed in the Mornington Peninsula Football League and another known as Frankston YCW, beneath the umbrella of the Nepean League.

The second of these teams was based down the road at Jubilee Park. Yet the idea of running around an oval as one of a group of Young Christian Workers lacked appeal. They raised the spectre of the past, a past I was determined to break the shackles of. The secular club did not. I knew former college classmates who played with Frankston YCW. It would be safe to say I would know few, if any, of the members of the Frankston Bombers.

I knew their home ground to be near Kananook Station. But I arrived fresh off the train to find the arena deserted. A note tacked to the clubrooms door indicated that they now based themselves at Bruce Park Oval, about a mile from Kiandra Court. I rode there on my bicycle after briefly returning home. Dismounting, I glimpsed a number of youths kicking a football on the oval. They were members of the team's under eighteen line-up. I went inside the clubrooms, changed into the gear I had rustled up and joined them in the fading afternoon light.

***

My teammates and I set our sights on Bonbeach, a few miles to the north of Frankston, for a practice match two weeks before the commencement of the season proper. I stood out most of the game, dressed in the club's red and black raiment, watching from the sidelines. Our coach Barry, a tall man with dark hair and a moustache, held a position next to me.

Not until the dying moments did I gain a run on the forward line. But the siren sounded before I could touch the ball. We had beaten the opposition by a small margin. Ill feeling between two members of the camps found expression when they shaped up to one another as all left the field. Before the scuffle could develop teammates restrained the antagonists. Hodgy, the member of our team involved, a youth with long, blond hair that a surfer or a singer in a rock 'n' roll band might have envied, ranted and raged in the rooms later.

I was under no illusions about my selection prospects when the season kicked off. Yet I made sure not to miss any of the twice weekly, Mondays and Wednesdays, training sessions. The Monday of the week of our opening match coincided with the Easter Monday holiday. Barry had informed us he would not appear at this session but mentioned that those who wished to train were welcome to do so.

I turned up at the ground late that afternoon. Only two other members of the team had shown, Hodgy and Hubo. They were kicking a football to each other at the clubrooms end of the ground. I took the field, having changed into my gear and watched Hubo go on his way. Hodgy, fresh from a pot shot at goal, retrieved the ball and began bouncing it.

"Anyone else coming?"

"Dunno," replied Hodgy. He kicked the ball to me where I stood, about thirty metres from the goal. I relayed it back to him and then looked on as he booted it with such force that it sailed over my head. Hodgy marked my next offering and after glaring at me kicked the ball with unbridled contempt. "Sink the slipper into the bloody thing!" I ignored his petulance. We called it quits shortly after this. Hodgy changed into his street clothes and rejoined his companion, a vapid looking blonde.

Five days later, on a perfect autumn Saturday, I boarded a train to Edithvale and walked to the Edithvale / Aspendale ground, midway between the two stations. A sizeable crowd was on hand for the afternoon's matches. The front bumpers of cars nudged the fence right the way round the large playing arena. Our battle was to be the curtain raiser to the clash between the firsts.

The Edithvale / Aspendale under eighteen unit had won the premiership pennant the year before. The members of the two teams stood facing one another in the middle of the field throughout the flag unfurling ceremony held prior to the match. I recognised an old college acquaintance among the opposition ranks. We gave each other a nod before the rite concluded.

I was one of three reserves selected that afternoon though by the rules governing the competition only two of us were allowed to play. In the end I was spared a direct part in the ninety-two point drubbing, a result that did not augur well for the season. I tramped off the ground with the others at the close of the fourth quarter. Outside the clubrooms, I heard the voice of Crespy, our captain.

"Thanks for sittin on the bench, Linds."

"Right, Crespy."

***

History repeated over the coming weeks. But I never lost hope that my chance would arise. More important, I never lost faith in my ability, the factor that would allow me to make the most of the opportunity when it came. I continued to visit with some former Mentone college friends and welcomed Tim and Gerard to town one day during the first term break from technical college.

At my urging we stopped at a sports store on Wells Street. To Tim and Gerard's amusement, I flicked through a rack of shorts until I came to a red pair I believed would suffice. The only item missing from my football kit was a pair of red shorts, the colour we wore on the afternoons when we played a fixture at home. To my way of thinking, they were an indispensable investment.

In addition to the Monday and Wednesday training sessions, I ran several times a week, mostly before breakfast. The larger of the two football ovals at Jubilee Park was ideal for this. The walks of several minutes duration to and from there served as the perfect warm up and cool down.

Early one Wednesday morning toward the end of May – I had turned eighteen in the first week of the month – I neared the oval, clad in my accustomed running garb. I clambered over the waist high fence at the southern end and stepped onto the grass, moist with dew. Checking the time, I passed behind the goals and commenced. I stayed close to the chalky white boundary line marking for a full seven revolutions, pulling up near where I started. Well pleased with this effort and my time, I walked away. I had never run so far on the big oval.

We were scheduled to play at Mornington in round five. By this stage of the season, even I had begun wondering if there was any point to my efforts. I was selected neither in the sixteen to take the field nor as a reserve for the Mornington match. I saw little point accompanying the team south in that case and until the day before was in two minds whether to bother with the journey.

My decision in favour proved of some use. Our hosts were short a goal umpire, a role I filled although I could claim no prior experience. Standing as unflappable as a Roman centurion in the swirling breeze, I harked back, not so many years at that, to grade six at primary school when I missed out on selection and volunteered under duress to parole one of the boundary lines instead. No one could have accused me of lacking versatility.

"You'll get a go soon," insisted Leanne, a classmate at technical college and the girlfriend of my teammate Butts.

I valued the espousal. The following week marked the beginning of winter. I rose early on Wednesday, a regular day off from classes, and ran in freezing conditions at Jubilee Park. Mum had come down with an early winter cold, leading to the cancelling of the day's driving lessons. She spent most of the morning and afternoon in bed. In an interesting offshoot to my joining the football club, she had begun tutoring one or two teammates.

At lunchtime I broke from studies at the living room table and fixed her a sandwich and a cup of tea. A laidback afternoon continued until it was time for me to leave for training. I pedalled off wearing gloves, a cap and a jacket as extra protection against the chill.

Barry truncated the session on the ground that evening because he wished to talk to us about game day strategies. For the best part of an hour he stood by a board in the club lounge and outlined tactics. Several minutes into the coach's oration Hodgy entered the room, leaving two female friends waiting outside. Barry put down his board marker after a while and dwelt on general points.

"For Christ's sake if it's muddy on Saturday, or any of the coming weekends, don't take the field with the idea of staying clean." He looked at each one of us in turn. "I used to do that myself and it was one of the things that finished me as a player. You can't play a dinkum game of footy if it's in the back of your mind that your socks and boots might get wet.

"I used to run on the ground with the other guys and instead of going through the mud and puddles try and dodge them. Don't do that! I want none of that friggin around! Run through the gunk the minute you go out there. If there's one thing that'll get you used to it, it's that." Again, he looked at everyone in the room. "Another thing. I don't want to see anyone here ever turn his back on the play. If I do see someone do it, he'll be off the ground before he can blink. That's a promise."

He went on in the same tone. "I notice some of you guys are missing a few training sessions. I want you to be more regular in future, otherwise it's the blokes ... " His eyes settled on me. " ... who take the trouble to train twice a week who'll get picked first."

I read nothing into the assertion. We had won well at Mornington the previous Saturday and in the absence of an overt indication that my debut was imminent, I went straight home after the meeting broke up, not troubling to await the announcement of the line-up for the weekend's match.

On my way home from school on Friday I stopped out front of a clothing store opposite the railway station. The team listings, for the firsts through to the fourths, were posted in one of the front windows of the store every week. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I gawped twice at the listing for the under eighteens. I had been chosen to play in the left forward pocket.

I took a phone call from my old Mentone college friend and fellow Geelong supporter Jan in the middle of the evening. I told him I had been selected to play. Pleased for me, he expressed interest in attending the game. It took but a moment to set up a meeting time for the next morning.

***

Saturday, the fifth, dawned still and sunny, tailor-made conditions for a game of football. Jan called around eleven o'clock and off I rode to meet him at our agreed on rendezvous point – the shop / subnewsagency near Leawarra Station. He walked the mile to Bruce Park. I made headway on my bicycle alongside him. Idle chat helped alleviate the nerves I had begun feeling.

The subdued air in the rooms prior to the match owed as much to my imagination as anything certifiable. We were primed and ready when Barry's assistant Murph, a balding man in his late fifties, appeared. "Time, fellas." We filed out of the building and ran onto the ground, moving at a canter until we reached the centre of the field, at which point we broke into a sprint. The members of the opposing team, Hastings, were already warming up. Barry made a beeline for the fence. In mid-field, Crespy and the Hastings captain waited for the umpire to flip a coin.

Crespy won the toss and signalled to the goals at the clubrooms end. Bristling with nervous energy, I took up a position in the left forward pocket and shook hands with my designated opponent. Barry passed on eleventh hour instructions to several members of the team before coming toward me.

"Back Butts up, Linds. Don't compete with him. Give him plenty of room."

"Okay, Baz."

I inserted a mouthguard and paced back and forth while waiting for the siren to start the game. As early as the first minutes of the second quarter, the match had the makings of a walkover. We were now kicking to the southern end goals. Butts, our full forward, gathered the ball when it again rocketed into our half of the field. Yards away to his right, I too ran at speed toward the goals. Three of the opposing team, including the defender tagging me, began closing in on him, at which point I yelled through my mouthguard. "When you're ready, Butts!"

A second later he handpassed the ball. I took stock of the goals and steadied before kicking with my right foot. The contact could not have been crisper. I looked on amazed when the ball scraped the inside of the right-hand goal post on its way through. Believing the young goal umpire might not have noticed the minimal contact, I sweated on his decision only to see him correctly signal one point.

Moments later, in attacking mode again, I pounced on a loose ball in the other pocket. Ideally balanced, I took aim at the goals with my left foot. Though the ball came perilously close to the left goal post, again a solitary point resulted. Cogho, a teammate I much admired, drew next to me. "You're burning, Linds!"

I construed his words as both timely encouragement and an attempt to settle me down. But I could not have calmed down for anything in the world. The ball shot forward again and I took an uncontested chest mark in the goal square. In my exuberance, unaware a Hastings player had dropped back to the goal line, I played on. The vicelike tackle of this opponent restrained me in the same instant.

In a purely instinctive reaction, I handpassed the ball over our heads toward the open goal, broke his tackle, sprinted round him, regained possession of the football and kicked it through the goals. I finished up on the ground, the Hastings defender clinging to me for dear life. We thundered to a stop near the fence.

"Y'okay?"

I grunted to indicate all was well and hauled myself off the turf. Grinning all over his face, Cogho approached a second time. "Linds, that was unbelievable! But when you mark so close to goal, you'd do as well to go back and take your kick." I knew, of course, that this was exactly what I ought to have done.

The half time siren sounded. We bunched near the middle of the playing area. Murph and a host of supporters joined us. "He was asking himself why he didn't give you a chance before this," Jan confided, referring to Barry. Our performance in the first half had exceeded expectations and to a man we were in seventh heaven. Barry, for his part, looked jubilant. Curly- haired Mezzo, one of the team not playing that day, went over to me when the huddle broke up.

"A mark, handpass and kick in one! How did you do it?!" I shook my head. I could not rightly say. "Now we'll get to see you at our end."

Midway through the third term, Butts and a close checking opponent flew for a mark in the square. My tagger and I waited to pick off the crumbs. Unfortunately for my adversary, the ball spilled off the hands of the two players and straight into my arms. In a flash I kicked it bullet-like through the goals.

Barry's voice stood out amid the applause. "You bewdy, Linds!" I responded to the acclaim with the barest movement of my left hand.

The final stanza saw us add further to our formidable tally of goals. I marked unopposed partway through, in a similar position to where I had marked in the second quarter. But this time there was none of the impulsiveness of earlier. Rather, I backed off several paces, took the kick and goaled. This was practically the last act in a game where we emerged victorious to the tune of eighteen goals. The small crowd on hand feted us. In the change room moments later Cogho, deservedly, received the award for best afield.

It had been a stellar performance by the team as a whole. Bruce Park had rained goals during the course of the hour-long contest. Playing with such élan, we would feasibly have routed any of our opponents in the MPFL competition that afternoon. "Good game, Linds!" I heard Murph's voice after exiting the rooms and rejoining Jan.

"Thanks, Murph," I said, giving him a quick wave of acknowledgement.

***

Though I would not become an automatic selection week in week out, Barry recognised something in me and went out of his way to focus on the chinks in my armour. At training during the week that I played game number three for the club, he bid me stay on the field longer than the others. For the next twenty minutes he repeatedly kicked the ball in a high trajectory, encouraging me to work on overhead marking.

The following Saturday, on a fine, windy early afternoon at Chelsea, we took the field two players short. Positioning myself on the forward line, I noticed the disparity of numbers in the form of a loose Chelsea defender. The ball penetrated our half of the field early in the match and this same player scooped it up and began running toward the centre. I gave immediate chase, sprinting far out of position, almost to the wing of the wide oval.

Chelsea were a big side. I was one of the taller players on our team, but most of our opponents were at least my height. Chasing one of them in the same quarter, a teammate of his shepherded me, a fair ploy that sent me crashing to the ground. "You okay, Linds?"

"Yeah," I said in response to Doggo, one of our team recently returned to the side after injury.

I picked myself up and went on competing as if I was intent on single-handedly making up for the fact that we were two players short. Late in the game, when we were trailing by about eight goals, the ball bobbed into our forward line. Caught on the wind with which we were kicking, it flew past several players, me included.

I turned and sprinted hard though I guessed the ball would dribble out of bounds before I reached it. Aware that I was on course for a collision with the waist-high fence encircling the ground, I slid onto my back. But the evasive attempt went unrewarded and I careered into one of the posts. I stood and touched my right shoulder at the point where the impact occurred. I appeared to be unscathed.

Walking away, I overheard what sounded to me like an elderly woman. She must have been in the car parked closest to where I rammed the fence. "Get outta town, yer Frankston mongrel!" she screamed. Without turning a hair, I let her curse dance away on the cool breeze.

"I heard an almighty crack when you hit that fence. And I was up the other end of the field." I was sitting with Swanno, one of our defenders, in the rooms at the end of the game. I made no response, unsure whether he was speaking in jest or earnest. I realised the latter when others uttered similar remarks.

"How's that shoulder?" asked Barry.

"It feels okay." I began unlacing and removing my boots. Barry, meanwhile, had a word with the team physician.

"Let Doc check it out, Linds." I went over to the medic, who held my right arm and moved it in every imaginable direction.

"Any pain?"

"Just a little soreness." Satisfied there was no damage, Doc turned to leave.

"Mrs Boyd will have something to say when she hears about it!" Cogho was addressing no one and everyone. He was in a position where he could have spilled the beans to Mum; both he and Doggo were slotted in for driving lessons that afternoon.

"Don't tell her, Cogho!"

I departed the rooms. Marty had arrived to drive me home and the senior teams had begun playing their match. I gave Barry, standing on the sidelines, a wave. Judging by the look on his face, he could not credit that I had made it through the game in one piece.

***

My eighteenth birthday having come and gone, like many of my Frankston Bomber buddies I looked forward to obtaining a driver's licence. I had sat some lessons with Mum since acquiring a learner's permit around the time I turned seventeen, but the frequency with which we took to the streets increased in the late spring and early winter of 1976.

I circumspectly drove the four-on-the-floor blue flash in and around town and listened to the instructions she uttered from the front passenger seat. "Always approach and enter an intersection at a speed that'll enable you to stop," was one of her oft-repeated mantras.

On a lesson in late June I turned, per her instructions, down one of the less busy streets skirting the central business district and halted by a vacant parking space beside Kananook Creek. But my attempt to back the Corona into the opening failed. Vexed, Mum resigned herself to the fact that the exercise would never be rescued from that angle.

"You'll have to pull out and try again. Jesus!"

"I'm not Jesus!" I deadpanned. "I'm Lindsay!" She broke up at this comment, a reaction I shared.

I passed the licence test on a frigid Wednesday morning in late July. That afternoon Mum and I toasted the achievement with a visit to Nana and Poppa. I handled the Corona for the first time with the sign on the roof advertising Mum's business turned down. Red and white probationary plates had replaced the yellow and black learner plates on the front and rear bumpers.

Nana and Poppa lived in a house near the end of a cul-de-sac running off busy Warrigal Road in Melbourne's southeast. It possessed the air of a bygone era, a time fast fading, nowhere more so I felt than in the living room; as a boy I enjoyed hearing the chimes of the massive grandfather clock. Both my grandparents were born in the Victorian countryside. The world they sometimes painted for us – Nana referred more than once to the swagmen who called at her parents' Meredith property early in the century looking for work – sounded endearing.

They were over the moon that I had become a newly licensed driver. "How's my four-minute miler?" asked Poppa, as I moved into his embrace. Later in the afternoon, we had some moments alone. He had been in middling health for a while and the weekly visits to Frankston were no longer a given. We were discussing my progress thus far in the tertiary orientation programme and, inevitably, comparing it to what I had experienced the previous year. I hung on his every word.

"A boy or girl might be feeling unwell on the day. Their chances could be ruined because of it."

"I think it's slowly evolving. Last year in biology the teacher decided ten percent of the final grade, basing it on the year's work." I smiled at Poppa. "Not that it did me much good."

"Not to worry."

"I'll do a lot better this year. The assessment is year round. The exams at the end don't count for such a big percentage."

Within a week of becoming licensed I was sitting in the living room at home, a book cradled on my lap. Dad sat chewing a sandwich at the table, the Melbourne _Age_ spread open before him. He had developed the habit of coming home for lunch, this being the only way he could be assured of an uninterrupted meal. He viewed with ambivalence the increased pressures that came with promotion in the ambulance service administration. He raised his head and glanced at me.

"Have you bought your mother a present?"

I shook my head.

"Will you?"

"Probably this arvo."

He turned his attention back to the black and white print. "I think you should. She put a lot of work into you getting your licence. The same with your brother."

That afternoon I borrowed Mum's purple Corolla, the automatic transmission vehicle in which she taught those pupils of hers not interested in the added complication of sitting for the more difficult manual licence. I drove downtown and attended to this duty, purchasing something I thought she might like.

Around this time we hosted Seaford at Bruce Park for our second last home and away game of the season. I warmed the bench again, but was thrilled to watch the team perform like young men possessed. We steamrolled our opponents by fourteen goals in a slashing display of power football. But following another easy victory at Rye the following week, no one could say whether we had amassed enough points to make the finals.

Two days later I leafed through a copy of the local paper the Standard in the newsagency situated on the T-intersection near home. The sports pages near the back, which featured the final standings for the season for all grades in the Mornington Peninsula Football League, told the tale. Our inconsistency and two narrow losses had undone us. We had missed the finals by a mere half game.

***

The minutes of the English lesson were ticking away without any apparent rhyme or reason. A decision had still to be made as regards a task. My classmates looked as befuddled as, I am sure, I did. Paul, our teacher, relit his pipe with his fine, tremorous hands and cast a blank look our way.

"What do you want to do?!" he asked, breaking the drawn-out silence and sucking on his pipe. " _Macbeth_? _Look Back In Anger_?"

Some of the students opened their books. I gave Col, seated next to me, a perplexed look. "Is there an alternative, sir?" he asked.

Paul removed the pipe from between his teeth and shrugged. "Write an essay or a story, if you want."

"About what, sir?" I asked.

"Whatever you like."

This set me thinking. Days later I presented two page-long stories to Paul. At our last English lesson for the week, silence pervaded the room. I was one of a number of the class poring over _Macbeth_ , a play that had always intrigued me. The remaining members concentrated on _Look Back In Anger_. Paul, pipe in hand and seated astride the table at the front of the room, dug my A4 sheets from his bag and handed them to me at a pertinent moment.

"Very good, Lindsay. Have you read John Steinbeck?"

"One or two."

" _Tortilla Flat_?"

"No."

"Your style is a bit like that."

I knew enough about Steinbeck to be flattered. I began reading the comments penned in red ink on the pages. Assaying them, I caught Col looking over my shoulder. I pushed the sheets toward him so he could read on without ricking his neck.

Mum, Nana and Poppa echoed Paul's enthusiasm when I showed them the result of my labour. The poetic turn of phrase delighted Poppa, who categorised one of the stories as poetic prose. This sounded like high praise indeed. I typed out the story for him one afternoon at the living room table. It would be sometime before I mastered the art of typing, but utilising the index fingers of either hand I completed the task.

Classes finished for the year a few weeks later and by mid-November my exams were over. In a far cry from the situation of a year ago, I passed every subject easily. Another summer closed in. But this one would afford none of the anxiety of twelve months past. I was positive that early in the New Year I would receive a higher education offer from one of the universities or tertiary colleges dotted around Melbourne.

My interests broadened across the board. I began growing out of the escapist schlock that had been my staple in literature and film for so long. On the strength of its reviews in the press, I put Marty and Chris on notice about a Swedish language film screening at an art house cinema in Melbourne's east.

We queued up to see _Face To Face_ on a temperate early summer evening. The experience opened up a world in the cinema we had not dreamt existed. I would never forget the ramifications. They were as profound in the area of film as those sparked in the realm of literature when I encountered _Crime and Punishment_ as a fifth former.

February marked a year since I first squeezed into Dad's old sneakers and covered about a mile out and back on Wallace Avenue. I remembered the precise date and commemorated the anniversary with a time trial. I commenced the workout early in the morning in the soft-packed sand beside the railway line near Jubilee Park. I doubled back after half a mile and returned to the same place. By my watch, six and a half minutes had elapsed. Short though the outing had been, in the heat and bright sun perspiration ran in rivulets.

***

A documentary on the marathon was screening on television. Complementary images, much of it grainy, old stock, accompanied the portentous narration. "In 490 BC, a Greek soldier, Phidippides, ran from Marathon, a battle plain twenty-five miles northeast of Athens, to bring word of a Greek victory over 30,000 Persians. An Olympic champion runner, Phidippides reached his destination in Athens, uttered the words 'Rejoice, we conquer' and then collapsed and died."

I watched the screen, riveted.

"But it was not until 1896, 2,386 years later, that the idea of a marathon was raised by Michel Bréal, a French student of Greek mythology. He suggested that a race along the Marathon – Athens route taken by Phidippides would make a fitting climax to the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896."

Again, jerky images of the times and events described corresponded with the narrator's words.

"In the years immediately following 1896, the marathon idea was taken up in Boston and New York and the event became an Olympic regular. The 1908 London Olympic run was from Windsor Castle to White City, a distance of twenty-six miles. Arriving at the stadium, athletes ran 385 yards around the track before crossing the finish line in front of the Royal box. Hence the marathon distance was standardised throughout the world at twenty-six miles and 385 yards or 42.195 kilometres.

"The 1908 marathon was notable for another reason. An Italian, Dorando Pietri, took the lead at the twenty-four mile mark. The day's unrelenting heat had forced twenty-nine runners out of the race. The Italian retained his lead comfortably until he reached the stadium. As he ran onto the track, he slowed to what looked like a drunken walk, turned right instead of left and fell. Doctors and track officials crowded around him. He was helped to his feet and pointed in the right direction. He fell four times, but in every instance was helped to his feet. Finally, supported by officials, he passed the finish line.

"Just before Pietri rose for the fourth time and broke the tape, the American number one, John Joseph Hayes, entered the stadium. He sprinted to the line as doctors attempted to revive the Italian, who lay close to death trackside. Pietri was disqualified though there were attempts to award the race to him. Hayes was declared the Olympic champion, but it was the Italian who stole the hearts and imagination of the people."

I went on watching the screen with unfaltering interest.

"At the 1954 Vancouver Commonwealth Games, the then world record holder for the marathon, England's Jim Peters, ignored the sweltering conditions and began the event at a speed that left several of his rivals floundering. One was helped off the course after running into a telegraph pole.

"Peters entered the stadium with a seemingly unassailable lead, but the conditions and his speed had left him badly dehydrated. The steep gradient of the entrance tunnel leading into the stadium blighted his sense of balance. He lurched onto the track, stumbled, collapsed and stood up again several times. It took him eleven minutes to cover two hundred yards."

I watched with bated breath the footage of Peters staggering around the track, dropping to the ground and picking himself up, surrounded by people urging him on. "When Peters fell for the eighth and final time he was picked up, rushed to an oxygen tent and fed intravenously with saline and glucose. He hovered between life and death for the next two days and never competed in the marathon again."

The documentary turned to the exploits of another legendary figure. "The incomparable Abebe Bikila was a member of the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie's imperial bodyguard. At the 1960 Rome Olympics he set a world best time in running barefoot to victory. Four years later, at the Tokyo Olympics, he finished four minutes ahead of the rest of the field in another world record time, five weeks after undergoing surgery to have his appendix removed.

"An attempt to complete a hat trick of Olympic marathon victories in 1968 in the high altitude of Mexico City failed when a leg injury forced Bikila out of the race at the seventeen-kilometre mark. The race was held in the full heat of the afternoon. The winning time was almost eight minutes outside the world record set in Tokyo in 1964."

The narrator's tone became more lugubrious. " ... Abebe Bikila was severely injured in a car accident and confined to a wheelchair following treatment at a paraplegic hospital in England. But he refused to give up competitive sport. He became an exponent of paraplegic sports, primarily archery, until his death from a brain haemorrhage in October 1973."

The footage showed a distraught Bikila slumped in a wheelchair, covering his eyes with his hand. Seeing this, my own eyes moistened at the corners. The programme began drawing to a close. "At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, heat forced thirty-three of the sixty-seven competitors out of the race, among them a twenty-one-year-old Portuguese athlete who died from heatstroke. Japan's Shizo Kanakuri was one of those forced out of the event.

"He vowed that one day he would return to finish the marathon. Many dismissed him as an eccentric, but Kanakuri kept his word and in 1967 returned to Stockholm and ran a final lap of the Olympic Stadium. Therefore, he completed the marathon exactly fifty-four years, eight months, six days, eight hours, thirty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds after starting."

I laughed out loud. "The final words should be left to the great Czechoslovak athlete Emil Zatopek. Reflecting on his success in the marathon at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Zatopek, who prior to this run had never competed in a marathon though he was the winner of three Olympic gold medals at shorter distances, said: 'If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon.'"

The documentary's closing credits began rolling. The concluding theme was heard over footage of a Tanzanian athlete limping through the darkened streets of Mexico City at the 1968 marathon. Presumably, every other competitor had either finished or dropped out long before. He struggled on alone. The last image, a freeze frame, showed him crossing the line. Deeply moved, I switched off the set. I had found a goal, something into which I could throw myself heart and soul, at last.

***

On the first Sunday in March I threaded a path along a lonely, unmade track a couple of miles from home. The derelict farm it abutted on the left defined the point where the town of my birth's ever broadening sprawl stopped and the countryside opened up. I searched in the distance for the place where the track met a road, catching a glimpse of a car as it sped along the bitumen. I looked at the time, turned and commenced the return leg of the afternoon's run.

Late the previous year I had begun making daily diary entries. For a lengthy period prior to then, perhaps three years, I kept a journal sporadically, scrawling entries only when I believed I had something of import to comment on. Relaxing on the evening of my out-and-back run to the farm, I retrieved the pocket-sized diary I used at the time.

I dashed off the following: _Began my marathon programme with a run to the farm and back_. I paused, reflected and put pen to paper again: _I hope the programme is completed and successful within about two years_. I wrote of this objective with the utmost seriousness. Though I knew not the undertaking I had set myself, doubts did not enter my head as to its viability. I believed I would brook any obstacles in the path through sheer force of will.

March also signalled the commencement of studies for an arts degree at a tertiary college in Caulfield, about fifty minutes by rail from Frankston. Returning home one day, halfway down the pedestrian tunnel leading away from the station, I sighted a face I knew approaching from the opposite direction. Barry's father and I appraised each other in silence for several seconds, as if we needed a moment to avow the other's identity. I had conversed with this encouraging, sympathetic man a few times in 1976.

"Still at school?" he asked, glancing at the bag in which I toted books, pens and paper. It was a throwback to my college years.

I answered that I had begun tertiary studies weeks ago. "Is Barry coaching this year?"

"He is. But he's not sure he'll stick it out at Bruce Park. He's had an offer from another club." He returned my gaze and explained further. "Not too many guys have been showing up to training."

"We had nights like that last year. But there was only the once when we weren't able to field sixteen on the day."

"Will you be coming down?"

I gave a non-committal shrug. "Travelling to Caulfield and back doesn't leave me much time. Plus, I'll be nineteen soon. That's probably too old."

"The team's allowed to field a couple of overage players."

I became pensive. "I meant to ask Barry his thoughts about me playing in the seconds."

"He told me the day of your first match that you did everything he asked of you. He was very pleased about that."

I smiled at the memory. All this sorely tempted, but not enough to go back to the club. It was as if having achieved what I set out to accomplish on the football field, on the Saturday of my first match in effect, I understood it was best to move on, being more naturally attuned to something else. It was time to pursue that something else.

Weeks later, on a damp Saturday in May, I walked to Bruce Park. My old team was being trounced. Watching the action from near the fence on the western side of the ground, I made out Barry near the clubrooms. Several ex-teammates were competing. I stayed for only five minutes.

I ran early the next day. Dressed befittingly, I entered the garage and eyed my runners sitting in their place on the lower rung of Dad's workbench. Instead of picking them up, I examined my old football boots, which I had not worn since the Rye game of last August. I discarded them after a moment and retrieved the runners.

***

A marathon was not the only long-distance goal I set myself early in 1977. The other crystallised in part because of the warm reaction some of my written work educed the year before. I also added this additional dare in order to add a measure of piquancy to a year that promised to bring with it more than its share of tedium.

I had not been at Caulfield long when it became clear that I would have to settle into either two major streams of study or one major stream and two minor streams. I chose sociology, a discipline that held intermittent interest at Frankston in 1976, as one major, but had no idea what else to opt for. Elective units – a potpourri were on offer – would bring me to the required number for each of the three years of the course.

Among these I chose subjects I had studied at secondary school and others that wore the varnish of newness. But until I picked that second major stream my degree would lack focus and the three-year period potentially feel as endless as primary and secondary school had often appeared. With this in mind I gifted myself an agreeable shorter-term focal point centred on writing.

But I made as little song and dance about this as I did my marathon aim. I may have spoken of it in passing but I left it at that. And I shared the confidence with few of my new acquaintances at the Caulfield campus, the majority of whom would never become friends as such. The sheer volume of students at the tertiary institution left me at sixes and sevens. This machine seemed a far worse beast in many respects and I found it difficult to follow the leaning of old and latch on to one or two close friends.

Someone I did let in on my writing ambitions was Peter, a fellow first year student with whom I passed the time of day whenever we sighted one another. Following a philosophy tutorial I walked to the campus administration building and saw him watching a video clip of a rock band on a television monitor affixed to one of the walls. We began conversing while keeping half an eye on the screen.

The subject of the future cropped up and I voiced my hope. He looked impressed though I did not refer to this deep-felt yen with the aim of slaying him. Debbie, another classmate, entered the foyer and greeted us. "Have you written anything yet?" asked Peter, continuing our conversation.

"Not much at all. But I plan to start a novel soon."

Overhearing, Debbie turned to me. "Are you going to be a writer, Linds?"

"Mmm."

"So I'll read your books one day?!"

"Maybe ... maybe you will."

Thought leapfrogged the void separating it from action weeks later, around the end of autumn. A month or so after this, with the second semester underway, I returned home one afternoon, picked up my diary and noted down the figure '40' in the left-hand corner of the page for Friday, July 29, a date more than a week away.

Next, I flicked through to the page pertaining to the day a week and a half later and wrote the figure '50' in the left-hand corner. On I continued. I could not say how long the project would be, but I thought it likely I would write at least 200 pages. Each figure represented the stage I meant to reach in the recently commenced manuscript, proceeding at the rate of a page a day.

The work advanced with due assiduousness, not at the expense of my studies but in addition to them. I passed much down time at the campus in the library, seventy to eighty percent of it spent banging the head against the brick wall of subjects for which I could muster little zeal. Often, I sat back and let the thoughts flow between two principal diversions: my novel in progress and the good-looking female students who periodically passed in and out of my line of vision.

***

The year wore on. With the steady deterioration of Poppa's health, weeks went by without my brothers and I seeing him or Nana, though Mum regularly dropped into their Loreen Street home, sometimes accompanied by Marty, Chris or I when we were not snowed under with our studies.

On a public holiday in winter none of us had classes to attend and so we joined Mum for the journey to Oakleigh. Poppa made nothing of the suspect coughs that prompted Mum to turn grim eyes his way. He went on smiling at us with his stock benevolence and affection. The evidence pointed otherwise, yet in our thinking he remained indestructible in a real sense, a figure above measly illness.

But this beacon in our lives ran aground about three months later. An early evening phone call sent Mum and Dad scurrying to Oakleigh. Marty, Chris and I waited in the living room, our interest in the television transitory at best. It must have been shortly after they arrived at Loreen Street that Mum phoned with the news.

I went about my usual business, classes at college, the next day in a state of torpor. It permeated everything, from the way I carried myself to interactions with others. The weight of Poppa's death would press for a long time. Gone was one who had been unstinting in his encouragement, praise and love, one who had extended a tender hand at times of distress.

I walked home from the station when I returned to town that afternoon. The world had again taken on a bearing that left me cold and I hoped the exercise might help. My route east took me by a local cemetery. I glanced at the rows of headstones, some with freshly dug-up plots of earth in front of them. Try as I might, I could not associate Poppa with anything like what I beheld. I was convinced this was simply the latest in an unending tissue of lies. He had not died; he would never die.

I had not been home long when Mum, Dad, off work that day because of the Melbourne Show Day public holiday, and Nana appeared. I threw my arms around Mum and Nana, both of whom looked at me out of red-rimmed eyes. A white-haired minister presided over the funeral four days later. I attended the ceremony holding to the same chary mindset. I played the role expected of me. I wept through the tears of Frank, one of Poppa's dearest friends, and keenly felt my mother's and grandmother's sense of loss. But I would never be convinced of the reality of that exodus.

I had another chance to dwell on the implausibility of death later that year. As Poppa's health faltered, the condition of a great aunt on Dad's side of the family also waxed and waned. She received hospital treatment a number of times and was readmitted in the spring. Dad planted the idea that Marty and I pay eighty-five-year-old Aunt Josephine a visit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital on a day soon after our studies concluded for the year.

Hospitals, with their connotations of illness and mortality, are unlikely to figure long in the thinking of those enjoying youth and a surfeit of energy. Neither Marty nor I had seen Aunty Jo for a long time. We could not know what state we would find her in and for this reason we traversed the corridors with an unspoken apprehension.

At her bedside we saw beyond a doubt that her age-related illness was relentless in its march. She stirred out of the peaceful state in which she reclined and made an exclamation of joy on recognising us. After an exchange of kisses, we moved into chairs and began talking. Several minutes into the chat Marty unveiled our travel plans for the following month.

"Yeah, Aunty Jo, we're off to Adelaide in January." She listened as if nothing could have interested her more. "Leaving on the sixteenth and back on the thirtieth."

"Is Chris going too?"

"Yes."

"That's marvellous! Do you have your results for the year?"

"I don't, but I've finished my course. I might do honours next year, depending how I went." Marty glanced at me. "Linds got his yesterday."

"I passed everything," I said.

"How long to go?"

"It'll probably take me two and a half years. An age!"

Aunty Jo laughed. "No!"

Her serenity prompted me to think back a decade or more, to the last time we saw our great uncle. Aunty Jo was with us. Not far from death, he too reclined on a hospital mattress, like his widow before us today. The air in the ward stifled and a portable television set stood on a support at the foot of the bed.

He epitomised courage, dignity and cheerfulness. Preparing to leave, Marty, Chris and I went to his bed one by one and embraced him. Tears in her eyes, Aunty Jo kissed him on the hands many times. It was a beautiful yet heartbreaking sight. I understood then that nothing would separate them, not even death.

We stayed with her half an hour. She talked right to the end. I left the room and hospital filled with admiration. I knew without hearing him say as much that Marty felt the same. What we did not realise was that we had said goodbye to her for the last time. She died a couple of months afterwards. In the years ahead I often reflected on those moments at her bedside, her strength and quietude. I would think then that this was how I would like to meet the moment of my leave-taking – suffused with the same valour and grace.

***

I continued working on the manuscript of my novel through the holidays, glimpsing light at the end of the tunnel around Christmas, the first we commemorated without Poppa. His absence lent the proceedings an aspect of incompleteness. But what I stood on the brink of achieving buoyed.

On the eve of our departure for Adelaide, I sat at the table in the living room and after an hour's work penned the final paragraph of the handwritten draft. I put down my pen and flicked through the 210 pages amassed over the preceding months. I experienced a heady sense of achievement unknown during my nineteen plus years.

The polish, or shortcomings, of what I had concocted mattered not. Nothing so arbitrary could taint the joy felt on attaining the goal set months ago. It was in such a high-spirited state that I set off for South Australia with my brothers early the next morning. Marty and I alternated turns at the wheel of Mum's automatic.

The weekend after our return from the Festival State, Chris joined some friends on a camping trip to Anakie, near Geelong. I was fast asleep in our bedroom when the telephone broke the 3 am silence on Sunday morning. I awoke and cocked an ear at the sound of Mum's footfall in the passage outside the room. Unease crept in but I could not hear her clearly during the long conversation that followed.

The next morning I discovered that Chris had taken ill at the camp and been transported to hospital in Geelong. We began the drive in the middle of the day, stopping in Oakleigh to pick up Nana, who looked as fretful about this unwelcome turn of events as Mum. At the hospital Chris lay dozing after an early morning appendectomy. The light touch of Mum's hand was enough to waken him smiling out of his drowsiness. Marty and I both laid a hand on him in greeting.

I ran seldom over the Christmas / New Year period and during our sojourn in Adelaide, but returned to this fast growing love of mine energised. Mum presented me a stopwatch early in the New Year – ostensibly, a birthday present in advance. With Dad due long-service leave from his job, they arranged a trip to Europe beginning late in March. They would still be on the road when I turned twenty in May.

I became more interested in recording my times and in before I knew it never sallied forth without the stopwatch cradled in the palm of my left hand. I began running longer distances and to accommodate them shifted from the football oval to the roads near where we lived.

Three days after Mum and Dad's departure for Europe, driving the Torana bequeathed to us on the death of Poppa, I pulled over to the side of McClelland Drive, an arrow-straight road a mile to two miles as the crow flies from the forsaken farm that served as the midway point of a number of my efforts over the past twelve months. Leaving the vehicle, I peeled off the jumper I had put on over my running gear, tossed it on the passenger seat and locked the door.

I had a hunch that I was about to run as far, if not further, than I had ever done. Holding the car keys in one hand, I activated the stopwatch in the other and commenced. Half an hour later I was close to finishing. The open road sat partly in the shade of the tall trees on the left-hand side and partly in sunshine.

At the sound of a car gaining on me from behind, I moved off the bitumen and onto the loose earth and gravel by the side of the road. Closing in on my starting point, I picked up the speed. Arms pumping hard, my breathing rate quickened. I reached the apex of the slightest of inclines and sighted the Torana 250 yards away. I maintained the impetus until I passed the vehicle.

Spent, I leaned against the front passenger door and bent forward hands on hips, a lather of perspiration. I heard and felt the pounding pulse at my neck. Looking at the stopwatch, I noted the time: thirty-three and a half minutes. This, I assumed, for a run of approximately five miles.

I conjectured that the roads further south and east would be ideal for longer outings. Long, straight and reasonably flat, they did not see heavy traffic. The sparsely populated settlements they wound through were Langwarrin, Langwarrin South and Somerville, the backblocks or satellites of my hometown, granted city status a dozen years ago, in 1966.

I judged the distance of every workout on the basis of the Torana's odometer readings. Early in April, I drove over a course that incorporated a long, steep hill on Warrandyte Road. I made a mental note of the twists, turns and undulations, afterwards calculating that it came to fourteen kilometres, equivalent to a third of a marathon. Idling the engine at the roadside, I jotted down the figure.

Five days later I set out to run the route. Miles into the workout I reached the base of the hill and braced myself, stomach muscles taut as bow string in preparation for the ascent. For one of the first ever times on a run, I had improvised a headband – an old handkerchief knotted around my brow. Perspiration seeped into the cotton every step of the climb but I conquered the pinnacle and ran on.

Zeroing in on the finish, battling a shortening stride and arms that hung lifeless and limp, I glanced at the stopwatch. I had been running for just under an hour. Yet the sight of the Torana up ahead geed me up. I revived, became surer in form and after a few more seconds finished doubled up in a grassy patch beyond the vehicle. I had completed a third of a marathon.

***

Still basking in this latest running milestone, I attended a three-hour communication studies tutorial at college the following Thursday. Now a second year student, I had become no more used to the windowless tutorial rooms and lecture theatres that were the mean at the campus than I had been at any stage of my initial year of studies.

Fluorescent light bathed the spaces, leaving none hidden and no latitude for shadow. The physical dynamics of these halls of learning frayed my peculiar sensibilities in diverse ways, adding to a suspicion that within them I was undergoing penance for infractions I had no idea I had committed, or had long since forgotten about.

I was one of about ten students in attendance that afternoon. Our young teacher's tendency to extemporise led me to think back to Paul, my English master of two years before. Like Paul, he needed us as much as we needed him, but if no one responded to his points gauche silences ensued. Partway through the class, when yet another blank space began resembling an indictment, the student seated beside me, Ann, leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

"What do you think?" I glanced at her. "What's your opinion? Go on!"

The unexpectedness of her entreaty left me covered in confusion. I had known for weeks that in this class I enjoyed a reputation for taciturnity even more marked than that usually ascribed. This was something I had lived with since birth. In the opinion of all I was quiet; in the opinion of many I was too quiet. Some pressed the charge as a simple fact they could live with. From others it wore the veneer of an accusation.

Years later, I would read the following passage in Nikos Kazantzakis' _Report to Greco_ : 'When a person is orderly and quiet in a society which is unruly, immoral and boisterous, when he welcomes neither men nor women into his room, he infringes the rules. He is not, and cannot be, tolerated. I have observed this all through my life. Since my life was always extremely simple, people considered it dangerously complicated. No matter what I said or did, they attached a different meaning to it, always trying to divine what was hidden and undivulged.'

In this tutorial, the unforgivable offence of my quietness grated most of all on Ann, an individual as garrulous as I was reticent. "Go on!" she repeated. For a moment I teetered on the brink of succumbing to her pressure and, for the first time in the class, offering an unsolicited opinion. However, I held my peace. Close-lipped, I went on staring straight ahead until Ann gave up and turned away.

I was not the only student in the class with a predilection for quiet. One of the young women showed a proclivity for the same. On the memorable afternoon that she broke her long-standing silence and weighed in with a carefully thought out observation, Ann could not let the moment pass without making a snide remark.

Incipient cliques, or circles of bosom buddies, raised my hackles more in young adulthood than they had done when I was a boy. Again, I steered clear and held firm to my tack. I could cope with any isolation and censure that might result, even if outright condemnation was usually never voiced. That Ann's circle would forever be closed to me became clear the time when, as an aside to the discussion then ongoing, we were stating trivial facts about ourselves.

There I sat, eager to put in my tuppence worth, until the sequence broke up and veered away from me. I might as well not have been in the room. Reflecting on their disdain, suitably pigeonholed, I persisted in mouthing not a syllable at the weekly tutorials. This being what was expected of me, I played the part to perfection, secretly delighting in giving them a demonstration of 'quiet' unlike anything they would have experienced.

Would the legion of critics hoarded over the years, among them Ann and her retinue, have recognised me in those situations when I revealed quite a gift of the gab, as the Irish call it? One wonders. In fact, to open up, I simply required someone with a receptive sensibility. But few people were blessed with the characteristic and so the chances of the floodgates opening were minimal.

In mid-April, with Mum and Dad abroad and neither of my siblings at home, I entered the front entrance hallway from the living room, where I had been sitting, and answered the jingling telephone. The caller was Maris, a relative newcomer to Chris's widening circle of friends. I told her he was not in. Undismayed, she was content to go on conversing. Nor was I inclined to curtail the chat, which must have run almost half an hour.

I met her a week and a half later. Chris brought her and two of his other female friends, among them his steady girl, to the house for a brief visit. We spoke several more times over the following weeks. Another call came at the same time that Col was visiting for a few nights. I had stayed with him and his mother and younger brother at their Box Hill home more than once in recent times and had given Col an open invitation to spend some nights in Frankston while Mum and Dad were overseas.

Maris expressed interest in making the acquaintance of the one who had been my closest buddy since early 1976 and asked if she could have a few words with Col. We had finished dinner and my brothers and Col were busy in the kitchen washing and drying dishes. I put down the handset and opened the door.

"She wants to speak to you, Col."

"Nah, Linds ... !"

"She just wants to say hello." I relieved him of his dishcloth and smiled at the way he hung his head on his way out of the kitchen. He might have been about to face a firing squad.

"Why don't you ask her out?" asked Marty. "If a chick had the hots for me, I'd go for it." Drying a plate, I grinned at the phraseology.

"You ought to take her out, man, even if it's just as a friend," chimed in Chris. I was grateful he could see things in this light. Just then, Col reappeared, much sooner than I had expected, a crushed expression on his face. I handed the dishcloth back to him and resumed where I had left off with Maris. I laughed at her statement that her efforts had been repaid with nothing more noteworthy from my tongue-tied friend than monosyllables.

Taking to heart the counsel I had received, I thought about asking Maris out. A concert in early to mid-May beckoned, but she could not attend. I prioritised the matter less as I became preoccupied with other things, not least those related to my running fixation.

***

On the first Saturday in winter I began a run in cold, wet and windy conditions. I had parked in the regular place by the side of McClelland Drive. Within the first yards, I grimaced repeatedly. Pain in the left knee was such that I knew right away I would not be able to run far. But for the moment I grit my teeth and butted my head against a merciless wind.

A Falcon travelling toward me braked to a stop yards away. The young man at the steering wheel reversed the vehicle as I continued south, maintaining roughly the same distance between us. After covering about 800 metres I glanced at the slowly reversing Falcon and its driver one more time and turned.

I lengthened stride a tad with the wind at my back. The only sound I could hear was the swirling breeze. The moment I pulled up I gazed over my shoulder. There was nothing to be seen. The Falcon had disappeared. Despondent about the end result of this effort, I sought the warmth of the Torana and drove home.

Semester one for the year ended around the time Mum and Dad returned from their travels. Both had been aware of my literary ambitions for sometime, but the matter was never discussed at any length until late that winter.

"But, love. How will you earn a living?"

Mum and I were in the kitchen. "I don't know. I'll think of something, if it comes to that."

She deemed this unrealistic. I saw that from the look on her face. "Do you think many writers can live off their earnings from writing?"

"I haven't thought about it all that much, to be honest. Probably not." I looked at her again. "It's what I want to do."

Though a time when I might burn my bridges and knuckle down to the task of trying to earn my keep as a writer seemed so remote as to be hardly worth thinking about, the misgivings Mum expressed were not lost on me. Dad, when he addressed it, broached the subject differently, expressing himself with an adamancy that made a meal of Mum's quibbles.

During the mid-year break I returned home from a trip to the city and on stepping inside overheard voices behind the closed kitchen door. Mum and Dad were mid-discussion. "It's about time he woke up to himself. A hard day's work would kill him and if he thinks he's going to be sittin on his arse writing books for the rest of his life he's got another thing coming."

The shock I received arose not so much from his viewpoint as such, which I had more or less gleaned well before this, but rather the vehemence with which he expressed himself. And yet it was ironical that a man who had, by his own admission, been born with an enthralment in newspapers and anything to do with them should not want a writer in the stable. Might he be won over in the future?

But the lines were drawn. To grant this _other_ dream of mine a chance of fulfilment I would have to defy him. But not for a second did I believe open insubordination would be a wise course to adopt with one so obdurate. I envisioned arming myself for a war of attrition similar to what I had brought to bear elsewhere.

Dad's voice sounded again. "The three of them are tied to your friggin apron strings. Do you realise that?"

"Bullshit!"

Hearing Mum's rejoinder I could imagine the malice with which she must have glared at her spouse in that moment. In the wake of their trip relations between them were more strained than ever. Little if anything was said but there could be no mistaking that the three months in foreign climes had been a trial, that the protracted close contact added pressure on a match short of perfect even on its good days.

Having chosen communication studies as the second major stream of my degree midway through the previous year, in the second semester I began a film appreciation unit under the tutelage of a bearded, bespectacled man whose appearance and methods diverged from those of most of the academics on the staff, not least the department head.

As Flausy disclosed, the opening weeks would be taken up with film screenings and discussions. Then, we would be given a chance to do some small-scale filmmaking. Flausy was also an actor and had played a lead role in one of the films he screened for our edification. Watching himself, his long legs fully extended in their worn blue jeans, he often burst into melodious laughter.

When Flausy had to absent himself one afternoon, department head Tony, as dapper and urbane as our regular teacher was helter-skelter and down-to-earth, stepped in and took the class. He made a few preparatory remarks before running the Marlene Dietrich feature _Dishonored_. Though a big fan of certain actresses, head of the list being the Norwegian Liv Ullmann, this _femme_ left me unmoved. One could almost feel the icy draughts wafting from the screen.

During the closing credits, Tony rose and stopped the tape. The student seated nearest the door switched on the lights unbidden. For a tutorial room, the space was large though there was the ubiquitous dearth of natural light and fresh air. The walls almost intimidated in their whitewashed uniformity. The department head regained his seat, much moved.

"What a beautiful woman!" he said, breaking a long silence. "Extraordinarily beautiful!"

Shortly after this, he invited us to take a ten-minute break. On the point of departing the room, I heard him sing out. "I'd like a word with you." I turned around. "I've had a look at your record." The news took me aback. What right did he have to inspect my academic record? "It's not that good." Caught off-guard, I could think of no response. "You want to do as well as you can. Employers look at marks."

Now I understood better. Till then I had not imagined employers had so little to do with their time that they could amuse themselves making detailed searches of the grades of the degree holders who applied to work in their firms. Which employers? Who was he speaking of exactly? I left the room nonplussed.

He would have found it a tall order to understand a student not going to great pains to obtain a degree largely, if not exclusively, with the aim of using the qualification as a springboard to gainful lifelong employ. In my case, nothing could have been further from the truth. It was precisely this treadmill I wanted to avoid. Had I told him so I imagine the shock might have induced heart failure.

He taught one or two of my other communication studies units in 1978. Alarm bells must also have sounded when he witnessed my performance – non-performance would be the better description – on the night two other students and I took front centre and presented a tutorial to the rest of the class.

One of the co-presenters was a young woman in her early to mid- twenties who came as close as anyone I had seen in a long time to warranting the mantle teacher's pet. This would have been glaringly obvious to anyone let alone an individual with my powers of observation. I might have had little to do with her in any case, but I deliberately kept far away when I cottoned on to the situation. The other presenter was a young man much more talkative than me by nature and with whom I had contact from time to time.

It was my misfortune to nominate the same tutorial topic as them. We never discussed our viewpoints or a mode of presentation. As it happened, we had no sooner taken our places when they bolted like dogs let out the gate at a greyhound meet. I strained to get a word in edgewise as both made rapid-fire, declarative statements in tag team mode. The moment one drew breath the other took over and at times they talked above each other.

This farce persisted several minutes, during which time I became aware by and by of the eyes of our fellow students and the teacher trained on me, as if awaiting my entry in the scrimmage. By the time the others eased off, I had lost interest in doing what I should have been given the opportunity to do as a matter of courtesy well before. This would have been tantamount to accepting the cricket ball with five minutes left on the last day of play, something I was determined never to do again. I pinned my hopes on the written tutorial paper.

I knew the risk I was running. A significant part of our end of semester grade was based on the tutorial, both the presentation and the written paper. I failed the presentation, but fared better on the paper, receiving a lower grade pass in the subject as a whole. The department head's 'pep talk' served no end, he may have concluded. Yet I felt less indignation at this state of affairs than I did in similar instances years before. I had locked horns with enough people of his kind not to be unduly bothered anymore.

On a Friday morning during a break in Flausy's film appreciation class, the big man himself accompanied several of us to the campus cafeteria. Munching on a coffee scroll, he uttered a brief but bitter denouncement of the department head, characterising him as the biggest rat he had ever worked with.

His vision of the units he taught failed to meet with the head's approval and he believed he was being systematically undermined. The astringency came as an eye-opener from one so mild-mannered by and large. Hearing him, I believed it inevitable this versatile individual would seek greener pastures in the not too distant future. But in the interim I, for one, was glad to have him around.

***

I had huffed and puffed to the middle section of the Warrandyte Road hill, centrepiece of the fourteen-kilometre run first tackled weeks earlier. A wind to be reckoned with pummelled me from head to toe and the violent pockets of air set in motion when trucks came thundering past forced me onto the malleable, mud-laden surface at the roadside. As unprepossessing as the conditions were, I held a rhythm and forged on.

Several minutes later, about two miles further north, I came to a flat section of road. The sky darkened, the wind dropped and it grew quiet around me until I could barely make out any sound but for my footsteps and breathing. Moments later torrential rain and hail began falling. Silently lamenting this development, I moved as best I could in the deluge.

When the rain ceased the sky instantly brightened. I listened to water trickle down inclines, cleared the vision with multiple shakes of the head and watched spray fly. Hair matted to my scalp and the running gear I was wearing clung tighter to the skin. Bringing a hand across my brow, I turned down the road that would bring me back to McClelland Drive.

Sometime later, passing the purple Corolla where I had left it, I tripped the button of the stopwatch. I had completed the fourteen-kilometre outing in fifty-seven minutes thirty-six seconds, my fastest time over the course. The rain, wind and mud had added incentive.

As methodical as I had been, I lacked a specific running goal until the last day of August. Newly returned home after a six-miler, I sat at the table in the living room flicking through the _Age_ , there devouring a brief article on one of the first pages of the sporting section, an item relating to the inauguration of a community marathon in the city of Melbourne. The mooted date was Sunday, November 5

How apt, I thought, that on the face of it I had been in training for several weeks already, without any idea that a target would be presented to me in this way. I marked the date in my pocket diary before re-reading the piece. November 5 was just over two months away. The thought of the work lying ahead daunted. I knew next to nothing about preparing for a marathon, but to stand a chance of completing the run it was obvious that I would need to cover longer distances in training.

On a clear and still early spring afternoon a week and a half later, I drew near the end of another fourteen-kilometre workout. The persistent buzz of electricity in the power lines predominated above all other sounds. There was no traffic as far as the eye could see in either direction. I neared the Corolla but rather than pulling up steeled myself for further effort. I was moving well and decided to enter the uncharted territory beyond the one-third mark of a marathon.

Ten minutes later, a mile and a half further on, I stuttered onto unmade North Road. I nearly slid on the gravelly surface more than once. Another ten minutes running brought me to Robinsons Road, a long thoroughfare that extended far into the countryside. My arms pumped slower and slower. Heaviness in the legs shortened the stride and made it a struggle to hold a straight course. I concentrated on my form to the nth degree.

I rounded the final turn. The traffic speeding along Robinsons Road lay behind me and again I picked up the buzzing in the power lines overhead. The traffic was typically light on McClelland Drive. I took advantage of the fact by striding out on the firm bitumen, stepping away from it only when a passing vehicle left me no choice.

The eucalyptus lining both sides of the road formed a canopy as I fortified myself for the last incline. My breathing had become shallow and in addition to the humming in the lines there was an odd popping sensation in my ears. I scanned the distance for the Corolla, which I knew to be half a mile away. But after completing a few more yards I pulled up, unable to go any further.

Returning to the car, I drove over the section of the course the extra territory covered. The odometer reading showed that it brought the total distance run to twelve and a half miles. My time? Just under eighty-four minutes. Pleased with this achievement, I drove home and went straight into the shower. I leaned against one side of the recess. As the warm, cleansing water poured down, I rotated my head in a loose motion. In concert with the tiredness felt, this had the effect of nearly lulling me to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, my hair damp and a long glass of water in hand, I took a seat on the living room couch. I allowed my head to loll back and closed my eyes momentarily to luxuriate in the warmth tracking everywhere. The sense of peace plundered was ineffable.

***

I had wasted no time in soliciting an entry form and training notes for the premiere Melbourne marathon. They had arrived in the mail the day before but till now a cursory glance had sufficed. I drank from the glass and began perusing the form and accompanying notes. I would complete and dispatch the entry slip less than a week later.

On the same day I ran in bitterly cold conditions. The spring climate where I lived could change from warmth to bracing cold in the blink of an eye. As a precaution that day, I threw on a jumper over my running shirt and shorts. But at no stage of the run of several miles did I truly warm up. My face, hands and legs flecked red.

In a bid to offset persistent leg pain, I returned to the football oval. I ran there again on the last day of the month, but because of the soreness barely moved above a snail's pace on the spongy surface. Early that afternoon, long after I had cooled down, I entered the living room at home and walked gingerly to the couch. The upshot of the weeks of training was this pitiable state of discomfort.

I took a seat and reached for the scrap of paper on which I had noted my tally of mileage to that point in time, counting back nine weeks from the day of the marathon: Week 9: 30 miles; Week 8: 35 miles; Week 7: 52 miles; Week 6: 43 miles. My mileage was hither thither, to put it decorously. As writ on the page in the training notes headed 'How far should you run in training?', in the two months prior to the marathon it was imperative I total 520 miles or better. This averaged out at just under sixty miles a week.

My progress total was nowhere near it. The dire state of my legs never led me to question the wisdom of the author of the training notes, a former middle distance world record holder who represented Australia at the Olympics in the 1960s. Who was I to distrust the word of a luminary? If he advised marathon hopefuls to average sixty miles per week in training, I felt compelled to set nothing less as my target.

But unless the leg pain eased, I would continue to fall well short. I made a doctor's appointment, in the hope that medical lore might divulge a remedy. The consultation took place on a fine and mild to warm late afternoon, the early part of which I had spent at college. I took a seat before Dr Bridge, a wiry, bespectacled man in his fifties.

"I've been having trouble with my legs, Doctor. Especially the right one." I pointed out the precise place. "You see I've been doing a lot of running. I'm training for the marathon next month."

He gazed at me above the rims of his spectacles. "Oh yes."

"You're planning on running it too, I heard."

He laughed. "I don't know. Somehow I doubt it. Dr Richards intends to, I believe. Take off your trousers and come over to the table."

I removed shoes and trousers and went over to the raised table that he indicated. I showed him the affected area, above the right ankle and on the inside of the leg. With the palms of both hands, Dr Bridge pressed down on the spot. I winced at the sharp pain.

"I honestly don't know what to suggest," he said at the conclusion of the examination. "What you appear to have is a condition equivalent to the tennis elbow common in tennis players."

"It's most painful at the beginning of a run. After a couple of miles or so it eases."

He thought hard. "Perhaps you could run on softer surfaces. Some sort of massage cream might help too. Besides that I don't know what you can do."

Dad drove me home after the appointment. I told him the verdict. He kept silent until we neared the house. "I know a bloke who might be worth a shot." He was referring to a former employee of his in the ambulance service, a man who had since gone on to establish a neuro-muscular clinic in an annex adjoining his home. Dad contacted him on my behalf and an appointment was set for the following week.

In the interim I pursued as closely as I could the suicidal training regimen framed by the former Olympian. Early in the afternoon on the Saturday three weeks and one day before the marathon, I crossed to the window in the bedroom I shared with Chris. It was a cool October weekend with no wind to speak of. I knew I could not pass up the opportunity. With the day of the marathon drawing near, time was at a premium.

I changed and before leaving the house prepared an energy drink mixture in a plastic flask. I drove to my start / end point behind the farm, parked the Corolla and concealed the flask in unkempt strands of grass by the side of the road. One hundred minutes, or in the vicinity of fourteen and a half miles, into the run I neared the car. I crossed to the place where I had left the flask. Dropping to my haunches, I imbibed a couple of sips of the mixture before setting off afresh.

I went on to cover twenty miles in two hours twenty-eight minutes. My perspiration saturated running clothes peeled off me in the bathroom at the house later. I ran the faucets and checked the water temperature before easing into the warmth. A ravaged complexion stared back at me out of the mirror above the basin. A bath was an uncommon luxury, but I felt I deserved it. From a more practical angle, I may have found it hard to stand upright long enough to give myself a thorough soaking in the shower.

Was the exhaustion of earlier that afternoon my first throwing down of the gauntlet to the celebrated marathon 'wall'? Perhaps. That evening, suspended on the edge of my bed, I finished the day's diary entry by noting the number of miles completed in training that week, the fourth last before the marathon. The twenty miler raised the tally to fifty.

It had been the one I wanted. In his notes, my nominal coach stressed the importance of putting in two such gut-busters in the lead-up to the marathon, the first about seven weeks before the day, the second approximately three weeks prior. But if I believed that with the casting aside of this burden my lot might then become easier I was in for a rude awakening.

***

I took a three-day layoff to recover from the twenty miler. It was a reprieve that passed quickly. I only needed to walk several steps to know my legs were in a parlous state. The day of my next run, Tuesday, dawned cool, overcast, damp and windy. For much of the first hour or so I could do no more than shuffle. Finally, one hundred and two minutes after setting off, I passed the Corolla and stopped.

It had taken the better part of this thirteen and a half mile run for the tenderness to drain out of my humbled lower legs. But knowing this would be temporary, I was not the least bit happy. I had run surprisingly quickly the previous Saturday. Now, I experienced disappointment when I remarked my time.

I showered, made a sandwich for lunch and left the kitchen for the living room hobbling from side to side like an invalid with acute arthritis. I trod the carpet pile to the couch and sat, adjusting position with the aid of my forearms. Settled at last, I unfurled the legs. The exactness of every move could not blanket the pain.

I had run early in the day because I was due at the neuro-muscular clinic that afternoon. I explained my jam to Peter, the soft-spoken, middle-aged Dutchman who ran the clinic. He beseeched me to lie flat on my back on a padded table. I involuntarily pursed my lips each time he ran his large, firm hands down my right leg, from the thigh to the ankle.

"When is the marathon?"

"Two weeks next Sunday."

"You'll be fine by then." After nigh on an hour he stopped massaging. "See how it is."

Peter watched me promenade back and forth. "It's better."

He brought a small bottle of potassium pills from a drawer in an adjoining room. "Take one every half hour for the rest of the day. From tomorrow, four a day."

Two days later I commenced another run, my first since the treatment. Within the opening half-mile, I passed a group of workmen at the roadside. They urged me to pick up my speed and so on and so forth, comments I ignored. To my chagrin, the pain felt worse than I had ever known in the initial minutes of a run. But, having no choice, I ground on.

The crippling soreness was not the only consequence of the weeks of training. I had let Dad know I now sported blackened toenails on both feet. When he asked to see for himself, I sat at the kitchen table and lifted my feet one at a time so he could take in the four dead toenails, two on either foot. As well, I had a blistered right foot, the price paid for having worn new running shoes for the first time the day before.

Mum appeared from the living room and looked on aghast. "When are you going to stop this bloody madness?!"

"He'll be all right," said Dad, with a hint of irascibility. "Take it from an old ambo."

The fickle spring weather yielded in the penultimate week of training to a small-scale heat wave. In the middle of the week Chris, in need of the Corolla that day, dropped me off on McClelland Drive. I had never made a habit of bringing a flask of energy drink with me, but conceded to the high temperature and came prepared that morning. I half-buried it in roadside grass and trotted off into the clear, humid conditions.

Though reduced to the shambling start that had become routine over the last few weeks, I took heart from the fact that it was not as enfeebling as it had been. But three quarters of an hour into the run, when I had completed between five and six miles, I called it quits. Dehydrated, I beared onto the gravel at the side of the road and began walking, a dispirited, lethargic walk, into the potent northerly breeze.

I alternated running and walking until I made it back to my starting point. The flask of drink lay in the place where I had left it. I took a mouthful but spat it out. It had become lukewarm. I ran a hand across my brow and walked toward the non-electrified railway line. Home was two or so miles to the west.

I walked on lackadaisically, following the track until it wound past the skeleton of a house under construction. As luck would have it, there was a working tap at the front of the property. I let the water gush hard and cool, soaking my face and neck and quenching my thirst. Sated, I moved on. The sun and breeze showed no sign of surrendering and the attendant humidity clawed at the neck.

I visited the clinic again later that afternoon. Peter massaged both legs this time. Over the last week or so I had begun favouring the injury and since then had witnessed an emergence of the problem in my left lower leg. Peter was unfazed. As during the first visit, I clenched my teeth each time his hands touched the places where the soreness was concentrated.

With less than a week to go to the marathon, I still lacked some vital information that I was expecting in the mail. But the wait ended on the last day of October. I arrived home from college early in the afternoon and came across a package on the kitchen table. I had been allocated the number 354, I discovered, when I opened the letter and withdrew the contents.

Besides essential printed instructions, the organisers also provided entrants with an eclectic smorgasbord including a container of energy drink mixture known as repalyte, glucose pills and a tube of heat rub cream. But it was my number that held the attention. You're a bona fide competitive runner, I thought to myself with a smile.

How many former college classmates would have believed it? I could not rightly say. In the three years since I passed through the gate leading from the back oval for the last time, I had lost contact with the vast majority. The only one who knew of my dream was Frank. We still spoke on the phone from time to time. Although the weeks of training filled my cup to the brim, the fact of his imminent twenty-first birthday did not escape me.

He let me know that he intended to commemorate his coming of age at a restaurant with family and select friends on the night of Saturday, the fourth. He invited me. But caught up in preparation for the marathon, I hardly thought of the planned dinner. The timing was not propitious and I hedged when Frank raised the issue, hinting that I would most probably not attend while not ruling it out altogether.

He called me again on the Wednesday before the weekend. Perhaps it was a case of unnecessary prudence, but I begged leave to absent myself, citing the enormity of Sunday morning's challenge. I made clear my wish to keep myself in clover on marathon eve. The physical and mental demands of the final training week had already almost taken me over the edge. I had completed a thirteen-mile run on Sunday, a fifteen-miler on Tuesday and planned another round of the same for Thursday morning. All I hoped I do on Friday and Saturday was put the feet up.

I did not go into such intricate detail with Frank. Would anyone but a fellow marathon aspirant have understood? Though he never said outright, I could tell he was unhappy with my decision. When I replaced the handset, I felt wistful. Did the single-minded pursuit of a dream necessarily have to translate into someone else's neglect or loss?

But I hastily dropped such weighty meditations. They were not for now. With my goal a matter of days away, ruminations of the kind would only have tied me in knots. In the final analysis, I was sure our friendship would survive my absence the following Saturday evening.

***

Minutes before leaving the house the next morning, I squeezed some of the heat rub cream into the palms of my hands and massaged the legs. I had not often fallen back on analgesic cream though Dr Bridge had suggested I could give something of that nature a try. Chris, again, dropped me off on McClelland Drive. I began the run and found that the leg discomfort had faded altogether. I could move with complete freedom, a state unknown for weeks.

Chris drew up beside me in the Torana. "How do they feel?"

"Fine," I replied, quietly overjoyed. He turned the car around and drove off. Twenty minutes into the outing, I came to unmade Fultons Road. Passing the front of a weatherboard house, a pesky Chihuahua broke through an opening in the fence bordering the property and barked and snapped at my heels for about fifty yards.

Half an hour or so later on this sunny morning I was proceeding on the left-hand camber of another road when a truck stopped yards in front of me. The driver left his cabin and asked whether I knew where such and such a road was. Unfortunately, I did not and I told him so without breaking stride. He returned to his cabin and brought the rig back out into traffic.

I had told Mum the approximate time I expected to finish this last training effort. She was there waiting in the blue flash the moment I pulled up, utterly depleted. Ferocious tiredness had descended out of nowhere during the final stages of the fifteen miles. The run had taken just over two hours. On the drive home, I rested, head back and eyes closed. I felt a not uncommon giddiness as the perspiration subsided.

Given the okay to drive the Corona to the Caulfield campus that afternoon, I followed the main highway until near my destination and in the process drove over much of the marathon course. I embedded the features of the road as if travelling along it for the first time. I contemplated how different it would look on Sunday when I pounded the bitumen on foot.

My classes for the year ended with a communication studies lesson. Our group had spent the last few Thursdays working on video productions in a compact studio. It was my turn to direct the segment being put together. Most of the other students acted in the piece. At one stage, Flausy referred to a point in my screenplay.

He read one of the lines back to me: _I felt his grip on my hands for five minutes after we parted_. "You could put that in a voiceover, like you've done, on top of a shot of him after they've parted. But I reckon there's a better way. Uh huh?" He explained. "Why not show them shaking hands? Then, cut to a close shot of his hand dropping to his side." He mimed the action. "That could be the final shot of the pitcha. Uh huh?"

I understood perfectly. Moreover, I was convinced I had learnt something essential about screenplay writing. The class concluded at five o'clock. Afterwards, I trundled toward the railway station, near which I had parked, in the company of one of the other students. I moved with contentment in the mild spring sunshine.

My legs felt fine and I revelled, as always at the end of a scholastic year, in the thought of the holidays round the corner. That evening, I added a bibliography to a theory and methodology paper for sociology, thereby completing work for the year. I removed the sheet from the typewriter and heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

***

"So, now you will win the marathon?!" It was Friday afternoon at the neuro-muscular clinic. Peter was giving my legs a final touch-up.

"I wouldn't put your life savings on it." He laughed. Per my wishes, Friday and marathon eve were days of relaxation. Throughout, I experienced a growing sense of anticipation. On Saturday afternoon, I plumped myself down on the living room couch and browsed the training notes.

I read aloud the passages relating to the marathon itself: 'At twenty miles comes the 'wall'. These six miles will be the hardest physical exercise you have ever attempted. This is where the challenge starts ... and often ends. The experienced marathoner learns to ignore all prior feelings of exultation or ease until he or she has reached the wall. Only then do they really know how well or how badly they are going.'

I put down the booklet and stole a look through the window at my back. The agreeably mild and sunny weather of the past couple of days had kept up. Moving into the kitchen, I switched on a radio at the top of the hour and tuned into a news bulletin. I drank a glass of water and went on surveying the spring sunshine cascading over the yard at the side of the house. I half-turned toward the set and heard the announcer prognosticate that Sunday would be warm and sunny, with a forecast top temperature of twenty-four degrees. I took the prediction with a grain of salt.

I made a point of calling Frank and relaying birthday wishes. I also reiterated the apologies of earlier in the week and found him more accepting and forgiving. For dinner I helped myself to a large plate of spaghetti. I was the only one to eat the carbohydrate as my main meal. Mum, Dad and my brothers consumed a portion as an entrée and then turned to another dish.

Much as the training notes had guided most of my strategies over the weeks, they were integral in the decision to carbohydrate load in the second half of the final week's training. The potential benefits of this ruse, not only to elite marathoners but also to anyone who planned a face-off with the event, were specified in the notes. I left it to Mum to emphasise carbohydrate rich meals from the middle of the week.

For one who had denounced my marathon quest, she proved an able and noble second when it became clear I was not about to let anything stand in the way. In the middle of the evening I sat watching a lottery draw on television as she busied herself sewing number 354 on the shirt I planned to wear. Col and I entered the draw every week and had done so for more than two years. I called him straight after it concluded. We spent a moment bemoaning our continued runs of outs and then spoke about arrangements for the next day.

Mum finished the needle and thread job. Thinking that in twenty-four hours – well under that, in actuality – it would be over, I felt remarkably self-possessed. I never dwelt on the fact that despite the blood, sweat and tears of the past couple of months I could still not truly conceptualise what I had let myself in for, or know how I would measure up. If the training notes were to be believed, the six miles beyond the twenty mark, the furthest I had gone in training, would test me like nothing had ever tested me.

I bid goodnight to one and all earlier than was my custom of an evening. Marty and Chris wished me well. I would see neither again till after the run. In bed, I followed the rhythm of my breathing for half an hour or so. With sleep evasive, I shifted onto my back and stared into the darkness for a moment before turning on my other side.

***

Dad entered the room at seven o'clock the next morning. The light touch of his hand roused me. Careful not to disturb Chris, I changed and left the room. Dad prepared a light breakfast. Their utility or otherwise was another unknown, but I swallowed three glucose pills and one potassium pill with the meal.

At the table in the living room I bent over a map of the course and noted down the times I expected to pass assorted points on the route. The weeks of monitoring my long-distance runs had given me a good idea how long it would take me to complete the eight five-kilometre splits. While I had to allow for a margin of error and the numerous variables that might come into play, I felt fairly sure of the estimates I wrote down and presented Dad.

From the nearest window I saw Col pull into our driveway. I went downstairs to greet him and then promptly began final preparations in the bathroom. I had been alarmed when I ended my first long-distance run in warm weather to find chaffing under the arms and the inside of my upper thighs. I also bled from the nipples that day. A jelly-like ointment served as a good preventive and after that first shedding I dabbed some on the susceptible areas whenever I prepared to run an appreciable distance in warm to hot conditions.

I used it again now. Replacing the small container in the cabinet behind the mirror, I reached for the cream the marathon sponsors had sent gratis. I felt less sure about the worth of this, but believing it might do some good applied liberal amounts on the legs. The pungent aroma called forth the football locker rooms of more than two years past.

I evaluated my reflection in the mirror before turning to leave. It would be more accurate to say I farewelled the self staring back. A sixth sense informed me loud and clear that when I next inhabited a mirror, I would meet a different 'him'.

In the garage I lowered battle-hardened feet into my oldest pair of running shoes and tied the laces, preferring them on this day of reckoning to the recently purchased pair. My mind leapt back two years and nine months to the summer morning in early 1976 when I entered the garage and slipped on Dad's old sandshoes for want of anything more appropriate. The distance travelled between that first mile and the twenty-six facing me now seemed the stuff of legend.

But it was no time for reverie. Dad and Col were in the car, the engine on. A purring engine denoted Dad's last call to those tardy enough to dare keep him waiting. Taking a seat, I glanced skyward. The overcast morning was tranquil and cool, making twenty-four degrees seem like a fanciful estimate. It had almost gone a quarter to nine.

The short journey to the start passed in silence. Dad found a parking space on one of the adjoining streets. We were in a part of town imbued with memories. The start was to take place on Foote Street, round the corner from our old Cambridge Street weatherboard. The scene was one of controlled pandemonium. Together with Dad and Col, I edged my way through the crowd, which grew thicker around the actual starting line.

"Seconds out of the ring!" I said, turning to Dad and Col on the stroke of nine.

"See ya out there, Snowball," responded Dad. I gave Col a smile. He made a gesture intended to inspire confidence and walked off. I inched my way further forward in the throng. I knew what I was about but sensed an odd detachment from everything. I so much wanted to get underway.

I went on winding my way forward until the crack of a gun signalled the commencement. The entire field, with me dragged along in its midst, began moving. Runners covered the width of the road. Shortly after I passed beneath the enormous start banner, the pack thinned enough for me to begin easing into the cadence sought.

I glanced left at the place, near the Cambridge Street corner, where my brothers and I formerly caught the bus to primary school. Then, I passed the street where we lived until we could afford the luxury of a home of our own. By the half-mile mark, I had the sought-after tempo. My legs, as on Thursday, were free of soreness. What I had tasted on that fifteen miler was not an illusion. With the timely intervention of Peter, a miracle had been worked.

On a run my gaze usually flitted around chest height. Rare were the occasions when I let the concentration wander at the whim of the multitude of distractions to be found at the roadside. But this course featured landmarks central to my personal biography and I was bound to size them up in passing.

I came upon a number in the compass of the first mile. Almost in spite of myself, I looked toward the hospital in which I had been born, almost exactly twenty years and six months ago. I rounded the next bend and on the left sighted our parish church, the symbol of something that decisively influenced my formative years.

And there, on the other side of the same intersection, was my alma mater, the primary school in which the impressionable me underwent, in the space of seven years, a range of human experience and life lessons. In years to come this part of my personal history would be levelled to make way for a business concern. Of the playgrounds, classrooms and toilet blocks, not a trace would be left, as if I had dreamt it or – the crucial distinction – someone had dreamt it through me.

But my leave-taking took place in this instant. Striding by these landmarks, I abandoned them for good. _You may have been decisive_ , I whispered to each. _You made me what I am today, but you no longer have dominion. I relinquish your hold. Whatever happens on this run, you can no longer touch me. I consign you to flames_.

Beyond the intersection, which marked the point where Hastings Road met Davey Street, a young woman stood brandishing a sign indicating the one-mile stage of the marathon. Once again, I realised this day had come to gestation with a run of a mile two years and nine months ago. Passing through the town of my birth, I went on glimpsing a hodgepodge of familiar sights.

A quarter mile past the primary school and church the course veered right at the main intersection. Following the marginal downgrade, I leaned into this sharp turn, becoming aware as I did of the sound of a chopper overhead. The field again spread the width of the carriageway, divided here into three lanes either side of a grassy median strip. The three hotels, the post office and a mixed bag of shops and businesses fell to the rear. The road, which would take us to the heart of central Melbourne, curved left. The streets of the central business district intersected it on the left and right.

A mile north of the main intersection lay Frankston's unimaginatively named Mile Bridge. North of there, a race marshal ushered runners into the left-hand lane of the now four-lane, undivided carriageway. I could not have been more focussed on the job at hand. I heard words exchanged but let them pass like birds in the sky. The motorcycle police who sped by and the race officials stationed at the roadside held me no more or less.

By the time I reached the five kilometre feeding station I had left the town of my birth and entered adjacent Seaford. A number of tables were lined end-to-end, cups of water and energy drink upon them. Damp sponges were also available. I passed by the first tables, chock-a-block with fellow competitors, and took hold of a full plastic cup of water at the last moment. Five seconds was all I required to sip and resume running.

On the outskirts of Carrum I began feeling the slightest niggle. Centred on the big toe of my left foot, I thought it unrelated to the soreness of the past couple of months. I could not put my finger on a causal connection. Thankfully, it hardly interfered with my stride. Feeble sunlight made a half-hearted attempt to penetrate the cloud cover. But the temperature felt comfortable and a modest headwind cooled the brow. Often when I passed a spectator, I savoured the individual's face. The presence of the onlookers spurred me on.

Another of the marathon golden rules outlined in the training notes pertained to the feeding stations. It was essential to drink water at each one, irrespective of one's level of perceived thirst. If not, competitors ran the risk of a swift slide into sweet oblivion. Though the days on which I had prepared a flask of energy drink and brought it to McClelland Drive were few and far between, I made absolutely sure to heed the advice.

Approximately eighty minutes after beginning the run I reached the fifteen kilometre feeding station. I stopped for the few seconds necessary to swallow a mouthful of water. Then, for the first time that morning, I availed myself of a sponge. Running on, I squeezed it overhead until my hair, face and shoulders were dripping wet.

The second bridge on the course extended across the Mordialloc Creek, at the seventeen-and-a-half kilometre mark. Around that point I passed a group of spectators unflagging in their applause. I felt a surge of sheer invincibility. Ah, but I must ignore any prior feeling of exultation! I had yet to reach the halfway point of the run.

I entered and soon thereafter left the township of Mordialloc. Beyond, the highway to the city widened again and curved for a distance before straightening. At the White Street intersection, the lights flashed caution. I was nearing Parkdale and Mentone, among the old stamping grounds second only in magnitude to Frankston. Over a period of six years, how often I crossed that intersection on the way to and from Beda Park. I bid adieu to this phase of my life too.

Nearing the Warrigal Road turnoff in Mentone, I knew I would soon come to the twenty kilometre feeding station. This was one of the points I had circled on the map earlier with an estimated time. I had not sighted Mum, Dad or Col on the course yet, but supposed I would before long. The thought had just occurred when I recognised their faces in the crowd.

They picked me out among the pack of runners. Their rousing encouragement stood out over and above all other noise. My spirit at once inflated to a new level. I smiled and gestured in acknowledgement. Running on, I glanced at my watch and calculated from the time elapsed that I was averaging around eight minutes per mile.

A poignant thought occurred in passing the turnoff. Nana continued residing a few miles from there, in the house where she lived with Poppa until his death thirteen months before. What pride he would have felt had he lived to see me now, he who had encouraged ceaselessly. I saluted his memory.

Round another bend, I confronted a section of the course with a girth and evenness that left it at the mercy of the breeze. I had noticed the headwind before this, but from the midway point it picked up. If faithful to the common weather patterns, it would increase in strength as I progressed toward my goal through the southern suburbs. The battle was about to begin in earnest.

Shy of twenty-five kilometres, near Cheltenham, I glimpsed a face standing on the median strip dividing the highway. I had not seen him for more than two years so I needed a moment to place Barry, my former football coach. I remembered the time he spoke of his thwarted sporting ambitions and of the effort he put into the weaker areas of my game. Most people who had singled me out over the last two decades had wished to reprove. Not this man and now it was as if he had somehow gotten wind of my goal and come to offer encouragement.

Decided fatigue began making its presence felt soon after I left the twenty-five kilometre feeding station. I held fast to the sponge that I picked up, gripping it as I might have done a precious talisman. I sponged my brow and face carefully before allowing it to slip from my fingers.

I kept running but in a kind of fog. The field was thinning out and as time and the yards passed I scanned the distance for a sign of the next feeding station. At last, I neared it. I made out the distance board in the foreground but when I drew close enough to read the kilometres indicated muttered to myself in disbelief. I took a second look; no, my eyes were not deceiving me. I had become so drained I had lost track of the distance.

I had completed thirty kilometres of the marathon, not thirty-five, as I had hoped, as I had cruelly deluded myself into believing. It mattered not that I had no recollection of the thirty-kilometre feeding station. I was sure I had run beyond this point and that now the finish banner in central Melbourne lay just seven kilometres away.

I put down the fact that the last five-kilometre segment had felt like ten to the famed 'wall'. In that case, what in God's name would the final twelve be like? The former Olympian had known what he was talking about, I grudgingly acknowledged. I paused for another drink. Though the flesh was fast losing interest in the toil, I ran on after the usual four or five seconds.

I sensed that the worst thing I could have done at this stage was break the rhythm for longer than that, to stop running for ten or fifteen seconds say, or think back on the thirty kilometres covered. Like a blinkered racehorse, I kept the gaze fixed ahead, determined to maintain the shoulder to the wheel.

Beyond thirty-two kilometres, or twenty miles, I attained a more immediate goal: the farthest I had ever run. By now, the field had thinned out even more. I left behind other competitors who had been reduced to a walk, some of whom had passed me at earlier stages of the marathon.

As anticipated, the headwind strengthened. But this was only one factor to be stomached on the onward press, a dynamic no more or less forbidding than the leg heaviness and the foot soreness. Finally, after an interminable interval, I sighted the actual thirty-five kilometre feeding station.

A kilometre down the road, on a flat sweep within sight of the St Kilda Road hill, Mum, Dad and Col hailed me for the second time. Once again they yelled their encouragement. Col left the kerb and began jogging by my side. "How are you? Are you all right?" I lacked the wind to say more than a word or two. "Wanna drink?" I made it clear I was okay. "You're doing great. Champion effort!"

He rejoined Mum and Dad. I had given everything but was not out of the woods. The vista of the oncoming hill staggered. I had been up and down it countless times in a car but never known it for what it truly was. But then I remembered the hill near home, which I had run multiple times in training, and how it had never vanquished.

Eyes fixed on the few yards in front of me, leaning slightly forward, arms gently pumping, I began the ascent. Several agonising minutes later, I crested the hill. A gradual downgrade brought runners back to level ground. The road swerved right. I measured each step with care, fearful lest I stumble and not be able to lift myself up. The nearest competitors ranged many yards to either side.

With the forty kilometre feeding station, the last before the finish, somewhere off in the distance, my gaze strayed to the roadside. Here, the spectators were few in number. Arriving at the station, I stopped for a drink but received little of it. My throat had begun seizing with tiredness and emotion. "Just over a mile to go," a race marshal called out.

I ran on. Over the last mile and 385 yards euphoria laced with pain coloured the increasing noise, splashes of different shades, the watching crowds and the city skyscrapers. The reality hit home: I was about to complete a marathon. And if I could set myself that goal and achieve it, was there anything I could not do? The road was clear up ahead all the way to the Melbourne Town Hall. I stood tall on my ankles and advanced to the finish standard.

Clear of the pennant, I waited for my number to be recorded. I exchanged a congratulatory nod with the runner beside me. All of us who had come on this journey tasted something extraordinary – divine, if you will – through the agency of our shared suffering. When I read him six or so years later, I would retrospectively understand Mishima's 'dissolution of the individuality.'

I heard an official call out my time – three hours, fifty minutes, forty-five seconds – and moved on, having been reduced to a burlesque of a walk. Fatigue had set up shop in every fibre and muscle. I could hardly stand straight but dared not sit. Playing for time, I ingested a cup of energy drink. Dad appeared moments later and on sighting me made an exclamation of amused astonishment.

I refrained from comment. I lacked the wind for all but fragmentary exchanges with anyone. Mum and Col appeared seconds later, their faces lit with broad grins. Leaving the finish area, I shuffled as best I could, Mum to one side of me, Col to the other. Owing to traffic congestion, Dad had parked some distance away. My marathon was not over yet, I thought wryly, wondering as I lumbered along if Abebe Bikila ever finished 26.2 in such a state!

With what effulgence shone the light that day.

**Epilogue: Unmasking**

Valour, radiance, resolute endurance, skilfulness, not fleeing from battle, munificence and leadership are the natural duties of the Kshatriyas.

_Bhagavad Gita_ Ch.18 V.43

Many writers of fiction may nurse a yearning deep down to one day drop the fictional masks and express themselves not through those creations otherwise known as characters but, rather, as themselves. The same might apply equally to any artist, be it a filmmaker, a poet, a playwright, an actor, or whomever, who works via a mask, a face, voice, body, or an 'I', 'he', 'she', or 'you' separate from their creator.

This desire to find a more unambiguous mode of expression must be acutely felt by the artist whose output is of a highly personal nature. Personal works of art, while not necessarily autobiographical, derive much from the essence of their creators and such artists may reside no more than a step away from a work that dispenses with masquerade.

Authors of personal, revelatory works can of course maintain that their inventions are mere fancy. If there is a limit to how much of themselves they are willing to disclose it is their prerogative. The audience may persist in trying to 'spot the author', but their efforts will more than likely prove futile. Artists commonly scatter bits and pieces of their true selves throughout their works, modifying or not as the case may be. Not with the intention of deceiving, but as an automatic defence mechanism.

Individuals whose work does not bear a personal stamp are another breed. But for those who fit the mould the possibility exists that they will at some time or another seek to dispose of the fictional smokescreen in favour of a form more suited to the kinds of highly personal utterances they may have been gradually moving toward.

More than once during her declining years my grandmother recounted the details of a conversation she claimed we had when I was a tot. She and my grandfather were paying one of their regular visits to the house we rented in Frankston. Sometime during the afternoon my younger brother and I were alone with her in the living room.

"What would you like to be when you grow up?"

"A brain surgeon," replied Chris, without missing a beat.

Nana laughed. "A brain surgeon?" She turned her gaze on me. "And what about you?"

"A writer," I replied, with no less certitude than my younger sibling.

The fact that I have no recollection of this exchange does not mean the tale is apocryphal. Nana lived until January 1987, long enough to witness several years' worth of my struggle to follow my dream. When recalling the above, she hastened to mention also her response to my response: a question as to how I would earn a living while aspiring to the status of a man of letters.

Entirely true or not, the story testifies to the canny gaze Nana cast on the ambition of a nascent writer. She raised early a problem that later assumed paramount proportions, one I took years to resolve. At school writing often resembled a chore but something about it quickened the heart. When, as a seventeen-year-old at an educational crossroads, I visited a careers advisor in Melbourne, I alluded to it as my aim as explicitly as Nana insisted I had done several years before. But no sure-fire course of action existed for a would-be scribe and therefore the careers advisor could offer nothing in the way of suggestions or practical help.

Up to then, school assignments had permitted negligible leeway to practise creative writing as such. But the situation changed in a matter of weeks. The young English teacher at the technical college I attended for a year in my hometown invited anyone interested to write some pieces that he would then read and comment on. He set no topics or time constraints.

I penned about half a dozen. The keen reception they received touched me. I thought it wonderful that something of my invention could have a tangible effect on others. I decided I would go ahead and write, unconcerned as to where it might lead. An irregular journal keeper since about the age of fifteen, in an effort to turn writing into a consistent activity I began chronicling daily diary entries. On a more ambitious scale, I commenced work on a novel the following year.

My goal of a page a day, no matter how busy I might be with classes and study at tertiary college, proved unshakable. The project occupied me for more than twelve months. When completed I did not bother to show it to anyone. I was content to bask in the unadulterated achievement. Full of ideas, I commenced work on another novel and also penned some small-scale works, mostly short stories.

I began studying the art of film. An avid cineaste, I found the subject inspiring. I gained a grasp of the rudiments of scriptwriting and began putting what I learnt into practice near the end of my degree years. I wrote a screenplay based on my first novel and also a short play. The next year I followed up with two more screenplays.

That same year I joined the ambulance service. Though my first screenplay received a young writer's award, there appeared to be few opportunities on the horizon. But even as I studied to be an ambulance officer I seized whatever opportunities I could to put pen to paper. I left the service, a job that required a total commitment, after a matter of months. I could not rally the required dedication and handed in my notice.

With this chapter of life at an end, I investigated the option of part-time clerical employment. An interview and a job offer resulted. I accepted it, resigned to living with the fact that the position entailed full-time work for a finite period of months rather than the part-time hours I would have preferred.

Around the same time I contacted a Melbourne based television production company. They employed young writers as script editors as a means of blooding them. When I informed them my first screenplay had won an award, they expressed interest in reading the work. I dropped a copy in the mail in the hope I might snare a job as a script editor.

Late in the year they wrote back to say they had read the script and unanimously felt I showed promise as a screenwriter, but ... ! The disappointing response did not dampen my boundless enthusiasm for long. Yet I was not content in the office, not least because writing fell by the wayside.

I assumed the position in December on the understanding that it would run till March. But with the original deadline nearing, I received word that I had been granted a six-week extension. I greeted this news with a well-concealed lack of enthusiasm. The crunch came in April. One afternoon my boss told me the odds were in favour of my being retained as a permanent employee.

I asked for time to think it over. I could follow my heart, give up the job and invest all my time, not just the odd hour here and there, into writing. Or I could continue working for the regular wage and hope that one day a break, enabling me to leave the office and become a full-time writer, would come.

I sensed danger in the second course. I feared the easy routine of office work might pamper, derailing my dream. I hardly knew how to express this deep concern to others. My heart won out in the long run, but not before a titanic struggle. I thumbed my nose at security on the off chance I might one day make a go of writing.

The boss of the enterprise called me into her office and I informed her of my decision. After the uncertainty of April, I made the transition with a feeling akin to rapture. As if to vindicate my choice, weeks before finishing up I heard from the artistic director of a youth arts centre in Melbourne's inner south. Earlier in the year they had advertised a workshop to be held in the winter. I forwarded them a play written two years previously and learnt that it had been chosen as one of those to be put under the microscope.

The weeklong event turned out to be an invaluable experience. The execution of the idea of the play, held to be sound, left something to be desired. The most constructive critical advice I received that week was to take the good aspects of the work and build on those. A couple of years later I rewrote the story in the form of a novella.

Shortly after the workshop the Australian Film Commission interviewed me about a proposal I sent them. At the beginning of the year I had made the trip into the city and chatted with the commission's projects officer about the idea, having submitted it in outline form. Seeing promise, she advised me to write some sample scenes with dialogue.

In my eagerness, I made the mistake of overwriting the material I tendered. But I did not expect to be told I was not ready to write the screenplay, or words to that effect. I failed to understand the rationale, given she regarded it as a promising idea that might evolve into a good film.

Not about to throw away the concept, I developed the outline into a treatment. A new projects officer then took this to the all-important interview stage. The interviewing panel consisted of two established writers plus the projects officer and another employee of the commission. I entered the room keyed-up. When I left it half an hour later, I would have wept had I not been so infuriated.

In a cavalier manner, the credentialed writers slammed everything from the storyline to the names I gave the characters. In their eyes the idea possessed next to no artistic merit and ought be scrapped. This humiliating experience sent me reeling and for days afterwards my confidence lay in tatters.

The inevitable decision came in the mail, plus copies of the pre and post-interview comments of the two writers. These heaped extraordinary damnation. One of the writers suggested I would be better off talking to someone than writing more. He also hypothesised that I possessed a secret about the project and / or my artistic intentions in general, a secret I did not wish to make known.

At the interview I heard nothing of the comments of the third assessor who read the treatment. These were included with the letter. This person liked the idea, a fact that helped me feel better. Subsequent to this disheartening episode, I knew things would be difficult. My conception of the cinematic art appeared at odds with that held by those who controlled the purse strings.

_But they could not stop you writing. The local film industry might not have been large, but you could contact other producers and directors. Perhaps you would find one who saw things how you did. You made up your mind to try_.

I wrote the screenplay, and another, later in the year. As the possibility of returning to the commission with the project, adequately reworked, had not been ruled out, I posted it to them on its completion. The projects officer believed the interview had done me some good but baulked at going further.

I forwarded the work to several producers and state film boards and generally it was well received. Areas that needed attention were brought to my notice. I would have been the first to admit the draft required polishing. Why, I asked myself, didn't any of the people who responded favourably offer to help?

I used some of the funds I had saved while gainfully employed to buy a video camera and portable recorder. Now, whenever I wished, I could translate words into images. Musician friends presented a piece of music to which I appended a variety of visuals. They lauded the finished product.

But none of the other options I explored – I applied to film schools and made applications to literature boards – came to anything. The New Year began on the same note. I took the idea at the basis of my as yet unfinished second novel and developed it as a screenplay. The end result in hand, I went back to the Australian Film Commission.

The projects officer, the same woman I dealt with the previous year, dismissed the script and idea in arrogant and offhand terms. Patiently, I responded to her criticisms but nothing I said changed her attitude. I rewrote the screenplay, bearing in mind some of her more constructive points, and resubmitted on its completion.

An application for funding to write another draft met with no success. But I counted myself as lucky to escape the indignity of an interview. Applicants to the commission's creative fund now received feedback in the mail. The notes of one of the assessors amounted to a homily as to why films such as the one I proposed could not be made. Even after my recent experiences, I found the patronising nature of the comments incredible.

I began making the rounds of the state film boards and independent producers and directors. From time to time I received effusive responses, which, if nothing else, helped restore some self-belief. Nor did the year amount to a complete write-off. I carried out further work for the musicians, efforts that again found favour with my enthusiastic, if limited, audience. Everything I filmed I shaped as professionally as restricted means allowed. I planned and brought to fruition two feature-length videos.

I had begun the first the year before, from a starting point no more definite than a mood. I worked not from a screenplay but developed the narrative line as I went. I saw to nearly everything, even the solitary acting performance, relying only on my friends to provide several pieces of original music.

The making of this labour of love proved liberating. For me, it also represented a timely warning in illustrating a path I feared I might stray on to if I did not keep the dream in proper perspective. That others could identify with this left an eerie feeling. As the months went by, every rejection I received increased my sense of isolation and loneliness. I put everything into the work and, the perpetual optimist, built the hopes high each time I sent something out. The acceptance I craved I sought in this way.

Now, apart from family and a handful of others, I encountered no one regularly. If I went out, more often than not I visited the cinema and frequently I made these trips alone. Steadfast determination to follow my star carried the corollary of a gradual drawing away from society. At times I became so absorbed in the setting up of a shot or the writing of a few scenes that I lost track of the hours. Afterwards, I relaxed before late night television or listened to music and regarded everything as shipshape. But I knew the comfort to be an illusion.

I ran off copies of the videos and posted them. An alternative arts festival showed interest in the first, but ultimately its length made it too difficult to programme. I wrote and shot a third feature-length video and began showing this to friends and other interested folk in the middle of the year. I relayed the script to a producer looking for properties in which character development took precedence. He also asked to see the minor production I put together. His interest in this project ceased there, but he declared that one day I would receive my due.

I continued to receive high praise every so often. I polished old ideas and developed new ones. After completing the third video I began work on a fourth. It involved a cutting loose much in the manner of my first sortie. The therapeutic value of the creative process acquired more and more validity over time.

But even as I embarked on this project I suspected that it would be my last film for sometime to come. There was a limit to how much I could achieve with half-inch videotape. I wrote just one new script during the course of the year. After more than two years of diligent effort and little to show for it, I was disenchanted.

All the same, there was no let-up during 1984. You began a novel. At the beginning your central character smilingly recalls a line from one of your favourite books. Seated in his flat, he waits for day to collapse into the evening. Outside, the sun is bright and orange but winter cold belies the lustre. You wrote those lines from personal experience, putting them on paper on just such a cold yet bright late afternoon. Truth be known, after two years of struggle you have become desperate, your loneliness razor sharp.

You think new rooms in an unknown town, thirty kilometres to the south of your birthplace, may help. But the move results in less contact. Faceless people in other government departments connive to further upend your self-confidence. Understanding has become so rare that a few words of consolation over a telephone wire almost bring tears.

You wear your loneliness like a suit of armour, plain to see but impenetrable. A friend comes to your aid one evening. You understand each other and lie in one another's arms. But your affliction has you so bad you cannot say what you want to say. You have too much to struggle with to help another.

Your attention turns to a pretty stranger in a store. Somewhere in your tormented head you entertain the thought that she could allay your anguish and seclusion, be it through tender lovemaking or another means. But you have become so inept you are unable to act. Afterwards you believe you chose for the better. Acute isolation will never be a good reason to enter a relationship. So, you remain alone. Your sole antidote for what you feel and endure the hours you spend writing.

You complete another screenplay, a last-ditch attempt to find favour as a scriptwriter. But it goes the same way as the others. What to do now? You try another way. Express all your disillusionment and despair in your novel while seeing how you have come more and more to resemble your outsiders, people who have rejected the world but found their alternatives as deficient as anything in the real world.

Chart the course of someone who has pursued a dream but cornered himself, someone who has recognised that he must fight his way out or die, knowing that one day you will have to follow this path yourself. Know now that you must tone your dream with a measure of reality or die, because you can no longer stand at a remove from your characters and say they are made up. Draw heavily on your dreams and the fears and desires mirrored in them to enhance the effectiveness of the message.

This is a remarkable achievement, you are told, but your main character's struggle leads him nowhere. Original, but too introverted. Professional, but too downbeat. But, but, but! Always the but! How, you rage, can something be called a remarkable achievement and yet rejected?

You vow to leave no stone unturned in your efforts to secure a publisher and become more unwavering the more rejections you receive. But nothing tips your way in a world where success equals making money and gaining the respect of one's peers. By such criteria you have failed miserably. You are penniless and have attracted the laughter, the denigration, of your peers.

Again, something happens to prop up your tottering confidence. Your film gains acceptance at a small arts festival. You tell everyone you think might be interested, the friends you have remaining, even those who have seen the film, the day, time and place of the screening. You write your former film teacher and convey the news. Driving to the auditorium, you ponder the incredible thought that anyone who wishes can view your film that afternoon.

You do not stay for the screening. Your work says all you wish to say. Instead, you disappear for an hour or so. When you return to the cinema, your film has minutes to run. You enter the near empty foyer and make out the soundtrack. You stand still and listen. The seconds that follow may be the loneliest you have ever endured.

Directly, three people, all of whom have seen the film before, leave the cinema. Individuals came and went, they say, but no one stayed long. You thank them and journey home, crushed. The fruitlessness. You can open yourself up without compromise and yet have the moment pass unheeded.

Convinced you will never advance anywhere in your country, you hanker for foreign shores. Here at home, they will never understand one who dreams as you do. You want the kingdom. But what chance here? They laugh at such as you. You are as much in conflict with the establishment as you ever were. You deliberate on departure.

But first you move to a place far from roads and neighbours. Trees and wildlife become your companions. You adapt quickly to the new mode, bask in the nature and work on. You continue sending material out but once again an apparent possibility turns into dust.

After a few weeks the enhanced separation, your paralysing sense of solitude, begins tearing you apart, exactly as you had feared. You drive miles and miles, do anything, in an attempt to flee it. You have failed to communicate with others through the written word or the filmed image. Now you seek a genuine attempt to communicate with someone.

You look to the person who has most sympathised with your struggle, one who has made known her empathy and admiration. This one, inexorably, you have loved for sometime. But you have not dared hint at the feelings you have for her, this friend of a friend. One night you tell her and at last live something real.

The next time you meet distance has replaced the warmth of old. She avoids your eyes. She has not accepted your avowal in the way you thought she would. Now, if only everything would go back to the way it was. How to make her see reason? Weeks later you stop at a phone booth near where she lives and dial her number. You receive no answer but drive there anyway. You glimpse lights in the windows.

No one appears in answer to your knock. You drive away, stop at another telephone booth and call again. You let the phone ring for more than a minute. At last, her voice, quavering, bordering on panic-stricken. No, she does not wish to see you. Not now. Not for an unspecified length of time.

You return to your car and sit motionless, staring out at the street, for several minutes. Then, you switch on the engine and begin the drive home. It has taken over four years for your heart to smash to smithereens, but finally it has happened.

Hellish nights and days follow. Rain pours from the sky for hours on end, as if nature recognises your plight and weeps with you. Countless times you rehash what happened. You know you must take your cue from how you have worked through the troughs in the past, but you are unable to divert your attention.

What remorse you feel at the loss of your confidant. Yet bit by bit you accept what happened and understand that old-fashioned tenacity will help you climb back up the ladder of life, toward better things. Surely, you can be hurt no more now.

You write another novel and another. Again, you concern yourself with dreamers, people who do not fit in. Why do they stand at odds, you ask yourself? How well or poorly do they reconcile their dreams with reality? This implies a process of continual unmasking, of your characters and yourself. You cannot be separated from your characters and yet you are none of them. Paths they follow, feelings they touch, might be what you follow and touch at a later time. As readily, you might furnish them snippets of your experience.

Some remark on the precariousness of your occupation, the unlikelihood of your ever ascending to the top of the bestseller lists. You smile to think how often you have heard this, as though the burning ambition of you and your kindred must be fickle fame. How little they know what drives you.

Such rejoinders hardly touch you now that the way you see things has altered. The evolution has been slow, but you have grown. You understand that a work of art can be regarded as remarkable, or original, or professional and yet never be permitted to breathe. Simplistic of you to have believed this could never happen.

And if the acceptance, or not, of producers and publishers does not change the value of something, neither does public acclaim nor public disinterest. You were riddled with doubt when you set so much store on the acceptance of others. Now you know otherwise. The same face will stare back from the mirror. The same gods will go with you.

You book an airline ticket and prepare your departure while you hurry to finish your third novel in less than two years. With your departure days away, you write the last scenes. Your mind in overdrive, you walk around the place where you reached rock bottom. The place where your recovery began. The actualisation of a dream. But a person can actualise a dream too well. So, begone.

Five years less five weeks ago you turned your back on an office job. Have the hundreds of pages, the hours of video, all been for nothing? Well, you have done what you could. Maybe the struggle will continue a long time. But this prospect does not daunt you. You feel you have the strength and stamina for extended journeys.

You take comfort from the thought that however hard things may be in the future they will never be as benumbing as these five years have been. In comparison with this, whatever lies ahead will be a breeze. You remember how long it took some of your idols to find their niche. And does your struggle warrant special attention or sympathy? No. The battles of many make yours appear trifling, you who stand on the verge of new life.

You recall an incident from childhood. One day your parents take your brothers and you to visit relatives. Something happens during the course of the day to make you want to reveal the high esteem in which you hold your uncle. You write a few words on a piece of paper. You know no better way to express what you feel.

The same through the years. Writing as the means by which to say what you wish to say and express things that you would find it hard to express otherwise. You are the musician who opens up only when he strums his guitar. There, on stage, taciturn musician, you reveal everything. You lay it there for all to behold. You find identification, communication. You bridge the artist / audience gap. Neither they nor you need feel so alone.

But the goal once attained can be like the edge of a razor. You know how easy it can be for an audience to watch a stylish and gifted performer and, as in the song, discover him strumming their pain with his fingers, singing their lives with his words. Sometimes your self-examination can be so dynamic, you can be so perceptive, that it is as if you have taken the diaries of your audiences and read them aloud. Imagine their feelings then if the artist looks but does not see them.

Artists far from beguiling in themselves can create timeless, soul-stirring works of art. But what shine those works of art lose if the contradiction is discovered. Like finding the actor behind a hundred tender characterisations to be uncouth and ill-bred away from the screen. No, you seek no such veneration. You would feel unworthy of it.

You knew that one day you would need to go out into the world and put your words into practice. This will be your true test as an artist and as a human being. Words remain that if not reconciled with action. You want to give to your writing as much as you can and then to give as much again, if not more, in reality. If you must pay a price of exile for your freedom, so be it. Never again do you want to feel trapped behind prison bars. Now, you desire to shake the world to its foundations, if only for an instant.

You have no interest in bestseller lists. Your work possesses the quietness and understated quality characteristic of a ballad. And if your thoughts were of such yardsticks, you would take heart from the fact that classically trained, serious singers of ballads can confound the record companies that market them as album artists and become million selling number one singers, given the right combination of circumstances. It has happened before and will happen again.

But you have distinct aims. In your world, possibilities, remote or otherwise, are the furthest thing from your mind. You give everyone and everything the extended look of the traveller who may never chance to be back this way. Then, you leave.

Dedicated to IJB, MEB (the first of three), CLB (the third of three) and, in memoriam, TAB (1927 – 2011).

Bibliography

Yukio Mishima _The Boy Who Wrote Poetry_

Swami Sri Yukteswar _The Holy Science_

Nikos Kazantzakis _Report to Greco_

Yukio Mishima _Sun and Steel_

James Douglas Morrison _The Celebration of the Lizard_

T. S. Eliot Portrait of a Lady

Bhagavad Gita
**About the author**

Lindsay Boyd is a writer, personal carer and traveller, and plenty else besides, originally from Melbourne, Australia. He has published, and self-published, poetry, articles, stories and novels. He also writes screenplays and has made a number of low-budget films.

http://www.smashwords.com/interview/ditamete

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**Other titles by Lindsay Boyd**

The Unintentional Healing of Soul

Proper Respect for a Wound

Thanks Be to the World

Please go to http://www.owenlindsayboyd.wordpress.com to read excerpts and for other information.

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**Connect with Lindsay Boyd**

Thanks for reading The Second of Three, book one of a two-part 'travel memoir'. If you would like to leave a review at your favourite retailer, please do. Book two, From a Caregiver's Point of View, will be available at smashwords soon.

Web: http://owenlindsayboyd.wordpress.com

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/lindsay-boyd/5a/b37/4b5

Friend me on Facebook: http://facebook.com/owen.l.boyd.3

Favourite me at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ditamete

