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whispered in my ear. ‘Julian, there’ll be a nice surprise for you tomorrow. But you’ll have to be a good boy and wait till dinnertime.’

      My tears stopped abruptly. ‘What?’

      ‘Wait and see. It’s not going to be a stinky Dinky.’

      

      I woke the next morning to a box of Shelby’s chocolates on the end of the bed. Yes, it was my birthday! In our house, a double-layer box of soft centres and a roast-chicken dinner were standard birthday issue. Presents were a different matter. Their quality depended on who chose them and the mood they were in when choosing. If it was Mum, we tended to get one thing of value among junk she bought to please my father. If Dad bought them, we’d get stuff that was completely useless. I had a Meccano set, a rugby ball and several Dinky toys in the bottom of my wardrobe. I knew by now Carmel would have thrown Nancy on top of the manicure set and necklace-making kit she’d hidden at the bottom of hers.

      I knew exactly what went on inside everyone’s wardrobes. I monitored them on a regular basis, particularly my mother’s. She was the only one in the house with flair and quality fabric. I spent hours going through her drawers and trying things on. This could only be done when Dad wasn’t home. He didn’t think boys should like nice things and hit the roof if he saw me as much as finger the fabric of a dress my mother was wearing. I tried to explain that fashion designers earned a fortune but Dad didn’t want to know.

      Carmel’s wardrobe was dangerous territory for another reason. I only ventured into her room when she was a good kilometre from the premises. It wasn’t worth getting caught. She could punch extremely hard and thoroughly enjoyed practising her Cassius Clay Royale. John and I were forbidden to thump her back, especially below the belly button. This mysterious zone was for making babies. Carmel was only too aware that the same protection did not extend to our testicles.

      As soon as I opened the magnet collection, I knew Dad had chosen the presents. His self-satisfied smile told me everything I needed to know. He sat there every bit the happy sadist as I opened the Boy’s Own Annual, the cricket ball and the kit-set model of a German tank. Crap, crap, crap. The only thing I could use was the cricket ball. It would come in handy as a bargaining chip with Carmel. I said thank you through my teeth and turned to leave for school.

      ‘Hey, Stan McCabe, you’re not taking your cricket ball?’ Dad wore the crooked smile of an insane sports fanatic.

      ‘I wouldn’t want anyone to pinch it. Far too valuable.’ I spoke through a locked jaw.

      

      When I got home from school, my mother was shoving bread and mixed herbs into the rear end of a defrosted chicken.

      ‘Where is it?’

      ‘What about hello?’

      ‘Hello, darling Mummy, where is it, please?’

      Mum pointed to a package on the table.

      My heart was thudding as I ripped it open. Inside was a cardboard box with a clear plastic cover. It was a doll and, according to the box, he was called Billy the Back-up Singer. I removed the cover and touched the miniature golden microphone wired to his hand. Billy was wearing a white shirt and black vinyl trousers. I would wait until I was alone before checking inside the vinyl.

      ‘He’s perfect, Mum.’

      I put my arms around her waist and held her tight. She bent down to receive a kiss but I licked her cheek instead. I liked licking my mother. She tasted both chemical and floral.

      ‘Ugh, Julian. That’s disgusting.’

      Mum giggled and wiped her face with the back of a crumby hand. She leaned against the sink and watched me remove Billy from his box. I put the doll up to my nose and breathed in the new plastic smell of his copper-brown synthetic hair. It was cut in a David Cassidy, just long enough to style with tiny doll curlers. Billy came with a change of clothes: a tiny pair of beach shorts and sunglasses. This was an odd outfit for a singer but I didn’t care. I’d make him something new to wear, a snazzy Liberace number for the spotlight. In my hands, Billy wouldn’t stay a back-up singer for long.

      ‘You know what to do, Julian.’ Mum laughed and ruffled my hair. ‘Go hide him in your wardrobe before your father gets home.’

       4

      ‘Julian, have you seen the Companion?’ My mother was making her way down the hall toward me. She sounded irritated.

      I was lying on my bed in my underpants and singlet reading a feature on Christiaan Barnard, the doctor who’d transplanted a heart into a grocer’s chest in 1967. The magazine had a photo of Louis Washkansky before he received the donor heart. He was smiling with a tube up his nose.

      I knew the word ‘donor’ meant dead person and was fascinated. The heart would’ve been cold, like one of the defrosted chickens my mother stuffed on birthdays. I put my hand over my heart to make sure it was still beating. There was nothing happening. Panic knocked at the back of my throat as I moved my hand to the left side of my chest. My mother snatched the magazine from my hands and left the room.

      Mum and I both enjoyed the Australian Ladies’ Companion. It didn’t have the glamour of Celebrity Glitter but it did keep us plugged into the Australian entertainment scene and even featured Tasmanian celebrities. Dick Dingle occasionally made it into the Companion for his work as patron of the state’s Little Aussie Rising Star awards. Mum told me to keep my eye on Dick Dingle. He was an impresario for talented young Tasmanians like me. The Little Aussie Rising Star was a stepping stone to the Golden Microphone which was an even bigger stepping stone to national television stardom.

      Christiaan Barnard was a star even though poor old Washkansky had almost immediately died. The failed heart transplant intrigued me. I closed my eyes and tried to picture what was going on inside my skin. We were currently studying the human body at school. Brother Duffy had started at the top with the brain and was working his way down toward the interesting area. We’d got to the kidneys, which I knew were attached to the important bits. Duffy had more or less admitted this when he said the kidneys were responsible for producing urine. I understood what that meant and was looking forward to the next lesson.

      I already knew how babies were born thanks to Ralph Waters. He’d led us into the Ladies’ toilet behind the Whipper Snapper fish-and-chip shop and pointed into the bowl where something brown and enormous was bobbing about in the water. It was three times the size of anything I’d ever produced.

      ‘The lady who dropped this A-bomb has had a baby.’ Ralph had raised one eyebrow and spoken with authority. ‘See the size of her floater. She’s stretched to buggery from giving birth.’

      I hadn’t considered how babies got out from inside their mothers. If they used the same exit as number twos, they had to come out filthy. That meant I’d come out filthy. I asked Ralph the obvious question.

      ‘Don’t babies smell when they come out?’

      ‘Nah, they’re inside a kind of bag.’

      ‘Doesn’t it hurt the baby then?’ I knew nothing about the dimensions of ladies’ bum holes. Female bum anatomy had absolutely no appeal to me. This was not information I needed to share with the likes of Ralph Waters.

      ‘If it’s a lady’s first baby, the baby’s head gets squashed to the size of a lemon.’ Ralph cast an eye over our heads.

      ‘And if it’s the third baby?’

      ‘Normal shape and size.’ I let out a lungful of air. Ralph had two older siblings like me.

      My brother was fixing a puncture on his bicycle when I got home. I stood for a moment examining him from behind. His head was definitely pointier than Carmel’s. He was trying to put the tyre back on his wheel by wedging two of my mother’s dinner spoons under the rim. A spoon fell

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