Read Online Mug Shots by Barry Oakley - Free Book Online Page B

celebrant. There was giggling amongst some of Carmel’s relations at the little gong the altar boy bonged at the Nuptial Mass’s consecration. We still have a brief colour movie of the couple leaving the church afterwards, in which Carmel looks dazedly beautiful and the groom is pulling strange faces—perhaps because we were both sedated on Oblivon, the unswallowable calmative that had got me through my Diploma of Education year.
    The reception was to be at swish 9 Darling Street, but financial stringencies forced us to cross this out on the wedding invitation and replace it with the less-fashionable Esplanade Hotel. As we arrived, Ted, the man who used to deliver butter to my grandmother and whom she inexplicably married (her second time), broke away from the welcoming guests, produced a ten-shilling note with a conjurer’s flourish and put it in my hand. ‘Keep it,’ he said loudly. (Ted was as mean as he was ugly. When we visited them later with little children, he’d take off the tops of the garden taps so they wouldn’t waste water.)

    Bride and groom, sedated by the primitive tranquilliser Oblivon. May, 1957.
    My brother drove us afterwards to a Warburton guesthouse, where we lasted only one night. The bed was uncomfortable and kids ran up and down the corridors too excited to go to sleep. The following morning, I complained to the manager. He was a rural humourist, accustomed to mocking honeymoon couples.
    â€˜Sleep?’ he said. ‘You’re on your honeymoon, and you got no sleep?’
    â€˜That’s right. We didn’t get any.’
    â€˜You didn’t get any, and you’re complaining?’
    â€˜You’re not getting any either. We’re leaving.’
    â€˜You booked in for a week.’
    â€˜You’ve got the deposit, and that’s all you’re getting—though there might be more—on the sheets.’
    We moved to a nearby hotel, where our trials continued. After our second night, Carmel broke out in giant hives. When I appeared at the highly public breakfast, and naively gave the reason for her absence, the news went round the tables and caused general merriment. ‘Bad news, son,’ said one bucolic wit. ‘Looks like she’s allergic to it.’ Like mothers-in-law, honey­moon couples were comic figures. Ripostes were impossible.

Dutiful Catholics
    We began married life in a flat in Thirteenth Street. Presumably the Chaffey brothers brought the idea of numbered streets from America, with the irrigation system on which Mildura is based. Every morning I’d ride my bike along Deakin Avenue to the Technical College, and Carmel would ride hers to Mildura Central.
    Snob that I was, I’d hide in my little office at lunchtime and read copies of Current Affairs Bulletin on Wittgenstein or The Modern Novel. We’d both get home tired—so many kids, so much heat. On Friday night this would escalate to an argument over the shopping and washing, after which we’d go to the Rendez Vous, the town’s only restaurant, enjoy freshly caught Murray cod and Mildara riesling, and share the latest schoolboy howlers with our friends Geoff Richards and Jack Thomas: ‘After the Romans had defeated all the countries they grew lazy and ate about a six-course meal and were defeated so their Empire fell.’ Gibbon in a sentence.
    We seemed to exert a powerful attraction upon lonely bachelors. The first of what would prove to be many was James McGrath, with whom I taught. James’s only company, apart from us, were adolescent boys. Here was a man who could transfix a school assembly, yet who spent his spare time taking favourites to the movies, or leading one gang against another. We came to live in fear of him. In drink he’d lie on the floor, mouth agape, lips furled like a donkey’s, declaring his great love for Carmel, and taking umbrage when finally asked to leave. ‘But I live here.’
    We