Dead Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘Bloody fortune. Extortionists.’
    ‘I was up north,’ I said.
    It was expected that the Lark would convey the men to St Kilda games, with a stop on the way toplace a few bets. Once it had been to Fitzroy games but we didn’t have Fitzroy any more, Fitzroy didn’t suit the national league’s plans, so they took the club around the back and drilled it between the eyes. Now we supported St Kilda, my idea, a misguided attempt to cheer up the lads, give them something new to argue about, something to do on weekends.
    ‘Up
where
?’ said Norm, as though I’d invented a new compass point. He adjusted the fit of the spectacles on his promethean nose.
    ‘Queensland,’ I said. ‘Went to see my daughter.’
    The heads turned to me. ‘Daughter?’ said the wizened Wilbur Ong. ‘Since when’ve you had a daughter?’
    ‘A while,’ I said. ‘She’s twenty-one.’ Somehow the subject of my daughter hadn’t come up in years of talking football and horses.
    ‘Well, this is bloody news to me,’ said Norm, aggrieved. He stared at me. ‘Now you’ve got a girl. And the young fella playin for Fremantle that’s the bloody spit of Bill? Wouldn’t know anythin about that, would ya?’
    ‘Not a thing,’ I said. ‘I swear.’
    Bill Irish, my father, dead these many years, was a Fitzroy Football Club hero of the late 1940s, a patron of this pub. He had undoubtedly at some time stood where I was standing, resting his stonemason’s boot on the same brass rail. And his father’s workman’sboot had probably been there before his. Daniel Irish was also a Fitzroy player, career cut off in its prime by a Collingwood hoon jumping on his arm accidentally. Twice. Given these male genes, old Fitzroy supporters didn’t understand why I hadn’t played football, didn’t understand and didn’t forgive.
    ‘Played shockin, your team,’ said Eric. ‘The fellas got problems findin the general direction of goal.’
    ‘Not to mention what bloody happens when they do,’ said Norm. ‘That bugger looks like he’s outta Pentridge on day release, he misses four, couldn’t reliably piss inta the sea.’
    Wilbur nodded. ‘Dunno about this coach either. Five goals behind, he lets the flower girls give up, talks to em all kind and gentle. Decent coach’d give em the red-hot poker up the backside.’ He paused. ‘Disgrace, I reckon, this team of yours.’
    The trio’s eyes were on me, unblinking bird eyes, the eyes of eagle fledglings, ruthless, demanding. Even in the closing stages, Julius Caesar faced a friendlier looking audience. Better looking too, I had no doubt.
    ‘So now it’s my team?’ I said. ‘Well, so be it. That’s that then. I’ll stick with my team. You lot can go back to not having a team. Or go for the Brisbane Lions. No, go for Collingwood, that’s a nice team, run by television money.’
    The bird eyes all flicked away. Then Norm’s came back.
    ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Man’s entitled to give his team a bit of a buttocking.’
    ‘A man who’s got a team, yes. Men who don’t have a team can’t.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stan the publican gliding across from serving the shaven-headed man.
    ‘Jack, my boy.’ His smug mood was upon him.
    ‘Stanley. What’ve you done to your hair?’
    Stan ran five pork sausages over his scalp. He’d had the sparse pubic springs shorn to a uniform height. ‘Today’s look,’ he said. ‘Got to keep up.’
    ‘Very fetching look,’ I said. ‘It was big in the Gulag archipelago.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘Nothing. I see the clientele’s going upmarket.’
    Stan gave his conspiratorial nod, leaned across the bar.
    ‘Drink vodka,’ he said, winked at me. ‘Stolly. They’re in new technology. The IT crowd.’
    ‘Who?’ said Norm O’Neill. ‘Eyeties? All in Carlton, the eyetalians. Accident of history. Coulda settled in Fitzroy. Makes you think, don’t it? We’da had Serge Silvagni, lotta grit that bloke, then his young fella, always rated that