her and she cupped his face before someone hauled him away, but not before he heard her cough and saw the bright blood gush.
If he hadn’t left school after eighth grade, his life might be different now, although he couldn’t see himself wearing one of those fancy-nancy straw boaters. Bad enough being picked on for being a dago, but a dago in a straw boater, struth! He knew he was a bitzer. A bit of dago, a bit of pom and whatever else, dark, but not as dark as the old man. You’d swear he was one, even though he couldn’t speak the lingo. Black hair all over him and big dark eyes. Angry eyes.
Gran reckoned Eddie’s grandfather, Eugenio, was a true gentleman who never raised his voice or his fists. All through school, Eddie had been targeted because of his name. ‘Dago mongrel’ stuck from grade to grade, but by the sixth, nobody dared to call him that, or anything else. He’d wait for the name-caller after school and get even. Three of them tried to jump him one day, but he got so mad they all went home with bloody noses and black eyes.
Eddie wished his grandfather’s name had been different, Chapman or Taylor, anything but Bertoli. When he was a kid, Gran often sat beside the wood stove, knitting or crocheting, and told him Eugenio had left Italy in a hurry because he was a red shirt. He got a job on a Swedish ship just before it sailed, but the blokes after him were hot on his heels, gave chase and ordered the captain to stop; by then, they were in international waters, so when the captain dared them to board, they turned tail. Eugenio was killed when a piano fell on him while he was helping a friend move it down some stairs. ‘He’d never say no to anyone who needed some help, whatever it was.’ She always sniffed when she said this. Eddie could never work out if she was sad or angry.
Even after all these years, the thought of working in the Yarraville Sugar Refinery made him shudder. He did a stint helping the women repair hook holes in the bags. Bloody dusty work. When he was older and stronger, they put him to work unloading sacks of raw sugar from the horse-drawn drays that carried the sacks from the port, hauling them to the top of the ten- or twelve-foot high stack, never sure whether the whole bloody lot would come down on top of him. The worst job was in the steam and heat of the boiler room where the brown raw sugar was boiled until it turned white, then dropped from the big boiler to the lower floor and other vats. For ten hours a day, he’d slaved in the stinking wet heat wearing nothing but his underpants and wooden clogs to stop footrot. The only good thing about the place was lots of the other blokes had stupid names like his, or worse.
After work, Eddie hung round with members of the Crays’ push, guarding their territory from the Vills. At first, there’d just been a few skirmishes, a bit of shoving and pushing, hurling bottles outside the corner pub, chucking bricks and chunks of road metal through shop windows, grabbing some loot then bolting when the coppers came. It turned serious when bloody Eric Parsons, the biggest lout at Yarraville State, took over as new leader of the Vills. One arvo Parsons led the Vills on a march down Napier Street, right up to where the Crays lounged against the pub, fags hanging from their lower lips, some wearing caps, some with bare feet or boots too big for their skinny feet and legs. Parsons waved a razor around like a band leader conducting his musos then stood back while Vills charged Crays. After Eddie had flattened another big bugger, he took on Parsons, kicked the razor out of his hand and planted one on his nose just as the coppers turned up. One of the coppers pulled Eddie away, took him to the station and sat him down in one of the cells. Tall and strong looking with brown hair and dark blue eyes, the copper looked a bit younger than the old man.
‘I’m Constable Nicholls. What’s your name, son?’ he said.
‘Eddie Bertoli,’ Eddie muttered.
‘Don’t mumble. Speak up. How old are you?
‘Seventeen.’
‘I’ve been watching you.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Do you want to end up in a cell like this?’
‘Nah. Course not.’
‘You’re headed that way, and worse, if you don’t stop hanging out with mobs of stupid louts.’
Eddie looked long and hard at the copper. He looked decent enough, wasn’t one who pulled out his baton, laying into them at the first sign of trouble.
‘What’s it to you what I do?’ Eddie scoffed.
‘I reckon you come from a decent home, and struth, you can bloody well fight.’
‘So?’
‘My mate Arnie Taylor runs a boxing gym. He might be willing to see what you can do in the ring, take you on if he thinks you can box instead of brawling like a thug.’
Eddie imagined himself in the ring. Dodging, weaving. ‘Dinkum?’
‘Yeah. There’s another tip I can give you, if you’re willing to listen.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A few new buildings are going up in the city. They need fit, young blokes to do the hard yakka. You got a head for heights?’
‘I can walk across the pitched roof of me Gran’s house, barefoot,’ he boasted.
The copper grinned and stuck out his hand. ‘You’ll do. I’ll talk to Arnie.’
Next thing, they were shaking hands. Eddie stuck out his chest and claimed, ‘I’ll give it one hell of a go.’ He paused and added, ‘Ta, yeah, ta.’
Constable Nicholls introduced Eddie to Arnie Taylor who sparred with him a bit, agreed he had the makings of a boxer and could start training any time he liked.
Eddie dozed off and woke to the sound of the tins rattling on the milkman’s cart, his horse snuffling and neighing, then trotting off after each stop. He topped up the electricity register with a couple of zacs, picked up the billy of milk, left it in the kitchen cooler with the butter and the Sunday roast, then built up the fire under the stove before heading to bed to grab a couple hours of sleep.
Chapter Two
Melbourne 1933 The Boxer
Eddie knew he was luckier than a lot of blokes. Fit and quick, he’d taken the copper’s advice, was hired and trained by the builders until he was a rigger on one of the tall buildings going up in Collins Street. When he and Ida married, they’d be all right, but he wanted more, much more, enough to buy a decent house in one of the suburbs that had mushroomed in the eastern suburbs before the depression. When kids came, he didn’t want them to grow up in this slag heap of a suburb, where oil refineries and chemical plants spewed out smoke, gases and fumes so you were trapped under a yellow, fog-bound sky.
From where he worked, he saw other, cleaner places. To the south was a wide curving bay, flanked by sand that looked gold in some light and white or pink in others. On the sea that changed colour from hour to hour, sailing ships, tugboats and oil tankers looked like painted toys.
To the east were mansions set in gardens splashed in some seasons with gold and red and in others with pinks and blues and white. In all seasons, he saw green hills and the clefts between where trees grew tall and free.
Some of his mates grew up in places like disused shops some landlord partitioned so he could cram in a few families who’d pay rent, put up with rats, rotten floors, walls made of Hessian or paper—grateful just to have any bloody roof.
At twenty years old and five foot ten in his socks, Eddie trained as a middleweight at Arnie’s gym, skipping, running, belting a punch bag, sparring with the trainers, going a few rounds with the professionals. When he’d knocked out a contender for the club championship, Joe “Tar Brush” Morrison, he caused quite a stir.
One night after training, Arnie called him into his office where photos of famous boxers were pinned at odd angles on the walls. Most of the photos were signed, and some had messages of thanks scrawled on them. He motioned Eddie to take a seat.
‘You’re lookin’ a bit flabby, Ed. Been hittin’ the booze?
‘Nah,