Do You Dare? Tough Times Page 2

  Dot was carefully arranging a family of dolls made from wooden clothes pegs into the old shoebox that served as their mansion. Petey was happily going through Tom’s collection of trading cards and throwing them onto the floor.

  ‘Careful there, mate,’ said Tom, lifting Petey up and tickling him under the arms. ‘We don’t want you losing Don Bradman under the bed.’ Tom had spent the best part of 1931 collecting the cricket-themed cards, which came free with MacRobertson’s sweets, and he nearly had the whole Australian team.

  Petey giggled and shrieked. Tom put him down and reached into his pocket to pull out a sixpence coin, the first one he’d had in ages. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ he asked.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ said Petey, and Dot leapt up excitedly.

  ‘Do you know who Stan McCabe is?’

  Dot and Petey shook their heads.

  ‘Well, he’s one of Australia’s best batsmen, and tomorrow I’m going to buy sixpence worth of lollies so I can get his card and finish off my whole set. I’ll keep the cards, and you two can help me eat the sweets. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Yay!’ cried Dot and Petey together, jumping up and down with excitement.

  ‘Beauty,’ said Tom. ‘Now, get yourselves cleaned up and into the kitchen – Mum’s about to serve the stew.’

  ‘Can Princess Patricia come too?’ asked Dot, picking up one of her peg dolls. Tom had helped her glue a small scrap of lace around it and make a piece of shiny tinfoil into a crown.

  ‘As long as her Royal Highness doesn’t plan on eating any of my share,’ said Tom. ‘I’m starving.’

  Mum was doling out the stew when they heard the front door creak open.

  ‘Daddy!’ said Petey through a mouthful of bread.

  ‘About blessed time,’ muttered Mum under her breath.

  Tom’s dad was built like a brick outhouse whose roof was on fire – tall, solid and with the same flaming red hair as Tom. Dad usually came home still chuckling over the latest jokes from the factory, but today he slouched into the kitchen with his arms limply by his sides. Mum took one look at his face and collapsed onto her chair. ‘Oh heavens,’ she said. ‘It’s happened, hasn’t it?’

  Dad took off his hat and nodded glumly. ‘Bleedin’ foreman didn’t even tell me to my face,’ he said. ‘I just found a letter tucked into my last pay packet telling me I was finished. Thirteen years I’ve been there, and they couldn’t even give me the sack in person.’

  Tom looked down at the chunks of potatoes and fatty meat in his bowl and suddenly didn’t have much of an appetite. He knew things were bad all over. You only had to walk down the street in Fitzroy to see unemployed men sleeping in shop doorways under piles of newspaper, or lining up at the town hall to get their government vouchers for a bit of bread and meat. But he never thought this could happen to his family – they’d been poor forever and always managed to battle on. It didn’t seem fair. Dot started to sniffle.

  ‘You stop that right now,’ said Mum, handing Dot her handkerchief. ‘There’s no sense in getting gloomy about this. We’ll just have to tighten our belts and make do as best we can until your father gets back on his feet. That means no new clothes for a while, and no second helpings.’ She looked pointedly at Tom.

  ‘I’m not goin’ on the dole,’ said Dad, arms crossed. ‘I’ve never taken a handout in me life, and I’m not about to start now.’

  ‘Then you’d better start asking every factory in Melbourne for another job,’ said Mum. ‘We’ve got enough money for the house payment next week, and to keep us going for a good month or two if we’re careful. But after Christmas . . .’

  Tom swallowed hard. ‘After Christmas what? What happens if Dad doesn’t get another job?’

  Mum looked across the table at her husband. ‘Well, if we can’t keep paying the mortgage on the house, the bank will evict us. Make us move out. Then I suppose we’d have to stay with Auntie Kath for a while.’

  ‘What, in that tiny house?’ said Dad. ‘It’s barely half the size of this place!’

  ‘They wouldn’t have room for all of us,’ said Mum. ‘Dot and Petey could probably squeeze in with the other kids, but Tom might have to go and live with Nan and Pop.’

  ‘No!’ said Tom. ‘Mum, anything but that!’ Tom’s grandparents lived on a scrappy old property in the middle of the Mallee, a whole day’s train ride from Melbourne. Tom couldn’t stand visiting them, even for a few days. For one thing, they hated children, and treated Tom like an unpaid servant. He shuddered as he remembered the time they made him scrub down their outhouse, then rub Pop’s bunions for two hours straight. And how could he possibly leave Dot and Petey behind, not to mention the Daredevils? ‘What about school?’ he asked.

  ‘Nan could take over your lessons,’ said Mum. ‘She did plenty of teaching back when she was a nun.’

  Tom couldn’t think of anything worse than having Nan’s smelly breath in his face all day, croaking out the answers to long division questions and calling him stupid if he got a single one wrong.

  ‘And Fungus?’

  Mum looked down at Fungus, who was staring intently at Tom’s bowl of stew. ‘Well, there’s no room for him at Auntie Kath’s. And you know how your grandparents feel about dogs . . .’

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Unless Dad could get another job, Tom was going to lose his house, his friends, his family, his freedom and his dog.

  It was all too terrible to think about.

  Across the table, Dot started sniffling again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom, but we’ll all have to make a few sacrifices,’ said Mum. ‘Still, there’s no need to panic just yet – Christmas isn’t for another couple of months.’

  Dad nodded, then shoved a big lump of potato into his mouth and winked at Tom. ‘She’ll be right, mate,’ he said, chewing. ‘I’ll come up with a plan, just you wait.’

  Mum pursed her lips. ‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.’

  3

  The next day was Melbourne Cup Day, which meant that Tom had the day off school, and everyone who still had a job got the day off work. Dad muttered something about ‘following up a new opportunity’ and disappeared straight after breakfast, and Tom spent the morning playing jacks with Dot and Petey. Dot kept on beating him, but for once it wasn’t because Tom was letting her win. He was preoccupied with the fact his family might soon be homeless.

  Like most of Fitzroy’s dense rows of terrace houses, the Parkers’ place was pretty shabby. Its three rooms were freezing cold in winter and sweltering in summer, and the paint was peeling off the walls in strips the size of banana peels. Still, it was where they had lived for as long as Tom could remember, and he couldn’t imagine leaving it, especially not to live with his horrible grandparents.

  Tom wasn’t sure why there had to be a Depression, but he knew it had properly started when the stock exchange in New York crashed a couple of years earlier (this part was still a little bit hazy to him, but it had something to do with a lot of things suddenly not being worth very much money). Since then, people were losing their jobs all over the world, other countries had stopped buying things from Australia, and businesses were closing down every day. Places that had lots of factories – like Fitzroy – were copping the worst of it, and it wasn’t like anyone in Tom’s neighbourhood had been a millionaire to begin with. The whole thing seemed pretty stupid – why did a stock-exchange crash on the other side of the world mean his family might have to give up their home? He bet the bank managers and stockbrokers that started the whole thing still had their houses, and it was just tough bickies for all the poor people.

  Tom was silent as he ate his lunch – bread with homemade cherry jam and a salad of lettuce leaves from the garden (a few of which had definitely been gnawed on by the rat). Mum had followed through on her threat to ban second helpings, but she partly made up for it by cutting Tom a thicker slice of bread than either of his siblings.

  After lunch, Tom and Fungus headed out to find the rest of the Daredev
ils. It was a clear, sunny day, and the whole of Fitzroy was buzzing. The cable trams along Gertrude Street were packed with people heading to the races in their best clothes. The women crowded into the covered carriage at the back, while the men jostled for space on the open-air seats up front, smoking and holding on for dear life as the tram zipped around the corner towards the city. Tom normally loved Cup Day, and wished he could join in the excitement, but the thought of moving to his grandparents’ dusty old farm without Dot, Petey, Fungus or the Daredevils was making him too miserable to speak.

  It didn’t take Tom long to spot his friends. Frank was kneeling on the road behind a stationary tram while Samson and Joan watched from the footpath in front of the pharmacy. As Tom got closer, he saw that Frank was dangling a string into the slot that held the tram system’s underground cables. The other end of the string was tied to an empty sardine tin.

  Frank grinned when he saw Tom. ‘Watch this!’ he called.

  The tram took off, and the sardine tin, whose string was now tangled around the cable, followed it along the road, making a tremendous racket as it scraped along the gutters and rattled in and out of potholes. A boy selling newspapers on the top step of the tram let out a cheer at Frank’s handiwork, while the conductor looked back at them and shook his fist.

  Tom couldn’t help but crack a smile as Fungus chased the sardine tin down the street, yapping loudly. He joined the other Daredevils and they followed the tram (at a safe distance – the conductor looked like he might have been a heavyweight wrestler in his spare time) all the way to the engine house at the corner of Nicholson Street. They spent the next few minutes watching the enormous steam-powered wheels that pulled the trams into the city and back.

  Joan stood to one side and gazed at the wheels, her mouth hanging open. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said. ‘They look like bits off a giant’s billycart.’

  They headed back towards Brunswick Street, where the pubs were jammed with men, some wearing neat new suits, others in flea-bitten old jackets with holes in the elbows. Weaving through the crowds, Tom heard one of the drinkers yell out ‘Here’s to Phar Lap!’ as he raised a glass in the air.

  People in Australia were pretty miserable at the moment, but Tom reckoned even the poorest, most down-on-his-luck swagman would crack a smile when he heard Phar Lap’s name. Phar Lap was the greatest racehorse Australia had ever seen. Over the last two years, he’d come first in nearly all of his races, and had won last year’s Melbourne Cup easily, despite being shot at by gangsters a few days before. He was a hero that the whole country could be proud of in these tough times, and even if you weren’t sure where your next meal was coming from, you could be pretty sure that Phar Lap would be first past the post on race day.

  The Daredevils slowed down to drool over the display in Mrs Yates’s sweet-shop window, but Tom wasn’t interested in licorice straps today. He kicked at a stone and then found himself blurting out, ‘My dad’s lost his job.’

  Frank whirled around. ‘Strewth,’ he said. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Last night.’

  Samson pushed his glasses back. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘My mum’s never had a job at all, and we’re doing all right.’

  Tom wasn’t sure about that. He’d been in Samson’s house and seen the rotting floors, the leaky roof, the piles of old bottles and the holes in the walls that let bugs inside at night. He sighed. ‘It gets worse. I’ll have to go and live with my nan and pop in the middle of nowhere if Dad can’t find anything by Christmas.’

  ‘Tom, that’s loads of time!’ said Joan.

  Frank nodded. ‘For once, Joan’s making some sense. Don’t worry, something’ll turn up.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Tom, sounding far more certain than he felt. He slipped a hand into his pocket and fingered the sixpence coin he’d been saving for sweets and the cricket cards that came with them. Mum was spot on – they all had to make some sacrifices. He decided to go without his Stan McCabe card for now, and take the sixpence back home to his parents instead.

  On the other side of the street, a paperboy walked past yelling out the latest headlines. ‘Get yer Argus here! Jewellery store robbery in Ascot Vale! Phar Lap to start Cup favourite at nine to four!’

  Suddenly, Tom had an idea. ‘Samson,’ he said, ‘if I bet sixpence on Phar Lap at those odds, how much money would I have?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any,’ said Samson. ‘The bookie’d have it all.’

  ‘No, you idiot – I mean if Phar Lap wins.’

  Samson scratched his head. ‘Nineteen-and-a-half pence.’

  Nineteen-and-a-half pence! With that much money, Tom could buy loads of sweets and take a whole shilling home to his parents. And Phar Lap was practically guaranteed to win. ‘We need to find a bookie,’ he said.

  Frank nodded. ‘Right. Follow me.’

  They raced around the corner of the Town Hall and through the backstreets, where a group of children were playing with a steel hoop. Not far ahead, an older boy with a dirty face stood at the end of a laneway, looking suspiciously at everyone that passed by.

  ‘Ask him, I reckon,’ said Frank.

  Tom gulped as they tiptoed up to the large boy, who had a painful-looking boil on his neck. The boy peered at the Daredevils and sniffed. ‘Whaddya want?’

  ‘We’re looking for a bookie,’ said Tom.

  The boy sized up Tom and the other Daredevils. ‘Yer not cops, are you?’

  Tom and Frank exchanged a glance.

  ‘Er, no,’ said Frank.

  The boy stepped to one side and jerked a thumb behind him. ‘In yer go then.’

  The Daredevils crept past him and down the laneway, which was shaded by large trees growing in the yards on either side. The bookie – a thin, oily-looking man in a faded suit – was sitting on an upturned packing crate in the middle of the alley and scribbling in a tiny book. He looked up as the Daredevils approached him. ‘What do you kids want?’

  ‘I’d like to place a bet on Phar Lap,’ said Tom.

  The bookie casually picked his left nostril, and flicked a little piece of something onto the bricks behind him. ‘Aren’t you a bit young to be having a punt?’

  ‘I’m fourteen,’ lied Tom.

  ‘Yer don’t look it,’ said the bookie. He shrugged and licked the end of his pencil. ‘How much are you putting on?’

  ‘Sixpence, please,’ said Tom.

  The bookie burst out laughing. ‘Sixpence? Do I look like I’m running a bleedin’ sideshow game?’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a wad of notes about an inch thick. He fanned it out towards the Daredevils, and Tom gasped as he saw how much money was there – ten-shilling notes, pound notes, even the flash of purple that represented ten whole pounds. ‘You see this lot?’ said the bookie. ‘This is how much money I’ve taken on for the Cup today. So tell me – what am I supposed to do with an extra piddling sixpence?’

  Samson cleared his throat. ‘You could see a Saturday matinee.’

  The bookie stared at him. ‘A Saturday matinee?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Samson. ‘There’s some soppy romance playing at the Regent this week, but on Saturday arvos they usually show something with cowboys and Indians. It’s great!’

  The bookie gaped at Samson for a moment, then sighed heavily. ‘I used to love those bleedin’ matinees,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll take your sixpence.’ He snatched the coin from Tom’s fingers and scrawled a few figures onto a slip of paper. ‘Good luck,’ he said, handing it over.

  The boy standing guard at the end of the alleyway gave a high-pitched whistle, and the bookie leapt to his feet. ‘Coppers!’ he said. ‘I’m off!’ He frantically gathered up his papers and sprinted towards the other end of the laneway.

  Not wanting to face any questions from the police, the Daredevils followed a few seconds later, nearly colliding with a horse and cart as they emerged onto the street. Samson pointed out that the start
of the race was probably only ten minutes away, so they raced north, looking for a wireless. They found one just in time in a neat-looking brick house not far from the huge white buildings of the MacRobertson’s Chocolate Factory, which covered several blocks of Fitzroy. At night, its enormous sign made of electric lightbulbs beamed the company’s logo across Melbourne.

  The owners of the big wooden radio had set it to full volume and thrown their front windows open, and a group of about two-dozen people had gathered to listen to the Cup.

  There was a cheer of excitement as the race got underway, followed by complete silence as the crowd listened to the call. Tom’s heart pounded as the announcer said that Phar Lap had started well before dropping back into sixth place. ‘There goes my sixpence,’ he muttered quietly.

  ‘Naw, he’s just playin’ with ’em,’ said a man with a bushy moustache and a battered tweed cap, who was standing next to Tom. ‘Savin’ his run for the end, just you listen.’

  Tom held his breath as the race unfolded, struggling to understand the radio announcer’s excited commentary, which came out so fast he might as well have been speaking another language. But from what Tom could understand, Phar Lap was struggling to make up ground.

  ‘Here he comes!’ said the man in the tweed cap, as the horses rounded the bend into the final straight. But moments later, the gathered crowd gave a mighty roar, followed by a gasp as the announcer reported that, incredibly, Phar Lap hadn’t won the Melbourne Cup after all. In fact, he hadn’t even got a place. Tom groaned as Frank and Samson patted him sympathetically on the back. He couldn’t believe it – Australia’s greatest horse had finished in eighth spot!

  ‘Well, that’s me last five bob gone,’ said the man in the tweed cap, tearing up his betting ticket in disgust. ‘Looks like it’s the Salvos kitchen for me again tonight.’

  Tom didn’t say anything. He bet whatever the Salvation Army was serving for dinner was a hundred times better than his nan’s choko stew.