and a nice bird on his arm. Tell me, what’s not to respect?’
‘Big man with his old man’s wallet.’ responded Kenny, rising to the taunt. ‘The guy’s a twit. Parading around the school yard with all his dickhead mates hanging on. He’s always trying to play the big hero by picking on kids, and showing off; why would you bother?’
‘I actually think he runs a pretty smooth operation … ’ countered Floyd thoughtfully, before adding, ‘then taking into account your thick eyebrows, hook nose and lack of sporting ability; he’s also still convinced you’re Jewish!’
Kenny cringed. What a mistake that had been; mentioning his rather vague family history, especially to a half-wit like Glen Harkin. His Grade 6 teacher, at the time, had been very impressed with his presentation ‘Where did I come from?’ His A grading had come at a price though. Shit, where did he come from? Well what the hell did it matter anyway?
CHAPTER four
‘Floyd, it’s your girlfriend!’ bellowed Helen McGuinness from the kitchen table.
She wanted to curse. Deftly feeding a five-year-old tangled in the phone cord, soup coming to a boil on the stove, and all the while she was trying to calculate payments for bills piled high on the kitchen bench. Would it ever finish?
A cordless walkabout phone lay broken gathering dust on a nearby shelf. It was an old Mother’s Day gift she just couldn’t bring herself to throw out; there hadn’t been many. She eyed it with suspicion. She’d been promised, at the time, it was repairable so between her two eldest sons and their tribe of friends, she reasoned one kind soul might, at least, have made an attempt.
Her voice reverberated through the old house. Paint flakes fell like dandruff from the shoddy paint work on the sagging support beams. The four-bedroom Californian Bungalow was well past its prime. The auction board three years earlier had suggested ‘Renovate or Detonate’ – but, in the time since, they’d done neither. The worst house in a very average street, it had really stretched their budget. Things hadn’t got any easier.
At the time they’d considered several smaller homes in drastically better condition. For a mother with three growing boys though, it was never an option. Space was a luxury she couldn’t forego. House policy had always been one of “open door” too; friends were generally welcomed regardless of reputation or condition. The unwritten rules were few, but respect was high on the list; respect for the tired old house, respect for each other, and respect for yourself.
***
Helen McGuinness
In 1967 Helen McGuinness had the world at her feet. The daughter of a prominent Melbourne family, she spoke 4 languages; three fluently. Well versed in the arts and an A grade tennis player, there was no problem at all rubbing shoulders at the very echelon of Melbourne society. Her real gift though, was the piano; not merely dazzling guests at her parents’ dinner parties, a place at The Conservatorium had been all but assured. Indeed it was the logical next step. Life, however, had other plans. They came in the form of a dashing, young Peter McGuinness.
Peter was a dreamer. He came from very humble beginnings in the back blocks of Dandenong, and then the sleepy Melbourne beachside hollow of Mordialloc. He had originally tended horses before school at the local Epsom training facility to put bread on the table of the family home. That, coupled with the local football club’s meagre match payments to his hard drinking, straight kicking, elder brother, Graham, was enough to keep the McGuinness family off the streets – just.
The demise of their father in less than honorable circumstances had been the principal reason behind the shift from Dandenong. They weren’t exactly chased out of town, but leaving quietly had been the only real course of action. Their mother never recovered. By the time Helen was even remotely on the scene, old Betty McGuinness already had one foot in the grave. The other was resting very comfortably on an empty cask of Riesling.
Like so many, life was a struggle for the McGuinness family. Ships, however, sometimes come in. When Graham hit the jackpot, on the back of some very questionable information, the McGuinness boys were suddenly on their way. He didn’t have many true believers and the racing commission tried to hold an inquiry but Graham just stuck to his guns; it wasn’t his first rodeo.
‘I’d had a few drinks at the time. I didn’t realise I’d put on a 100 unit Quadrella.’
His reputation helped. He’d always been something of a ‘mug punter,’ so it was almost within the realm of possibility. Certainly nobody stepped up publicly to call the big Mordialloc full-forward a cheat. There were a few though, questioning under their breath why he hadn’t shared the information. He answered them all with the same dry line.
‘Ain’t no such thing as a sure thing!’
The only other winners in all of Australia – a few prominent local racing identities with a 50 unit syndicate of their own – begrudgingly turned a blind eye. Peter copped a mild beating and lost his job at the stable yards but the TAB paid; not happily, but they paid.
The money was directed, with some difficulty, straight into a Bayside Hamburger restaurant before it was whittled away. A shrewd move in any play book, and it looked, for a while anyway, like you really could spin gold from “Fine Cotton”. It was in those early, heady, carefree days that Pete McGuinness, the flashy young restaurateur, made his opening play for the lovely Helen.
Passing through on her way back from a relaxing weekend at her family’s seaside cottage in the neighbouring suburb of Chelsea, Helen had only stopped in at the restaurant to use the restroom.
While not exactly smitten to begin with, Peter was certainly very different to the usual suitors her parents were suggesting at the time. He possessed a certain crassness that under the right circumstances, perhaps through the right lenses, could be construed as charm; it refreshed her. Anything was possible with Peter McGuinness. He was brash, he was bold, and he was relentless.
The chase appeared innocent enough; seduction being an art not a science. More frequent trips to Chelsea, long walks, smooth talks, gourmet hamburgers. Perhaps he added a little too much beetroot. It all came unstuck.
Hardly 1968’s wedding of the year; Helen’s family scrambled to preserve what little there was left of her honour. Horrified; yes, but Pete was tolerated due to Helen’s total infatuation. He was coarse and unrefined. His formal education was confined to the minimum requirements of the state, but Helen couldn’t be swayed. Here was the man she’d teach, and learn from; and grow old with.
It wasn’t merely Pete’s upbringing that disturbed the Helen’s old man, and it wasn’t his laziness, total lack of business accumen or the fact he was lucky, not successful. No, never one to admit it publicly, he just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that his little girl, the apple of his eye, was marrying a Catholic.
Early marital bliss transcended any potential problems as the newlyweds settled into their new life together. Home was the idyllic, rough and tumble bayside suburb of Mordialloc. Helen though, paid more than the price of beachside real estate. Estrangement was what she paid, and within three months of marriage her father had shut her out completely.
With a teary eye and a tender heart, she knew that things between them would never be the same again. He came from the old school; the school where family pride and honour remained the tendered currency. Even the birth of Douglas did little to re-unite them. Her father sent just a solitary note, wishing her the best.
Outwardly though Helen McGuinness shone; thriving in her new role of mother and housewife. Free from the shackles of expectation and preconception that had marked her youth she strolled the palm tree lined boulevard of Main Street, Mordialloc and knew for the first time what it was to really breath. Butcher shop, bakery, chemists and cafés, two reasonable Chinese restaurants, a video rental for a quiet Monday nights snuggled up with the family, and a regulation post office; who could want for more?
Honest local traders; a real sense of community that made her feel she was part of something. All interspersed with parklands, sporting-fields,