Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar

‘That’s enough.’

‘But you talked like—’

‘I said that’s enough!’

Dent put a hand up. ‘J-J-J-James, your boy’s sh-sh-sh-short-sighted. H-h-h-he probably can’t r-r-r-read the blackboard at sc-sc-sc-school.’

The doctor wrote out a lens prescription and arranged to meet Dad at the pub later. We drove in silence to the optometrist. Dad must’ve been thinking about what Dent had said and was unusually kind when we reached the shop. He told me I could choose any pair of frames I wanted. It was like being told I could have the best callipers money could buy. I trawled the racks several times, finally narrowing the choice down to two models. My heart said yes to a pair of blue frames with gold rivets on the sides. These were the signature candelabra of fashion frames. Another part of me, the part that read Celebrity Glitter, said yes to simple black plastic frames, not unlike the signature spectacles of Yves Saint Laurent. I showed Dad the two options.

He raised his eyebrows and jabbed a finger at the blue frames. ‘Put those back on the ladies’ rack, right this minute!’

Mum said I needed a signature tune to go with my trademark frames. I sang her Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ as we drove to the optometrist to pick up the glasses, stretching out the last ‘waaaaay’ until my voice disappeared for lack of air. We were both excited about my new style accessories. Mum agreed they’d give my face a certain something. I told her that certain something was ‘Je ne sais quoi’. That’s what all the stars had, according to Celebrity Glitter.

The woman behind the counter was chewing something when we entered the shop and seemed irritated by our arrival. She located my glasses on a shelf under the counter and jerked them out of their case. As she handed them to Mum I realised with horror I’d made a big mistake. They were not Yves Saint Laurent. The frames were too circular and chunky for Yves. The lenses were thick and convex. The overall effect was like a party novelty, the sort of thing that went with a plastic nose and moustache.

‘Mum, my eyes have cleared up. I think we should get our money back.’

‘What? Now you’d prefer a white stick or Labrador?’ She laughed and elbowed me.

I didn’t smile back. The situation was critical. I couldn’t accept novelty glasses. I wanted to be a celebrity, not a clown.

‘I didn’t want to tell you this, Mum, but last Sunday I looked at the statue of Mary in Our Lady of Miracles. She was crying real tears. Then suddenly I could see everything perfectly. Even those little hairs inside Father McMahon’s nose.’

My mother shuddered. ‘Why don’t you just try them on, Julian.’

The woman behind the counter sniffed with impatience. She wasn’t interested in Christian miracles. She was as hard as they came, probably Protestant. I was going to tell my mother as much as soon as we got our money back and left the premises.

Mum slipped the glasses over my nose and tucked the arms behind my ears. I blinked and gasped in surprise. A rack of Albert Tatlock frames came into view. So did a poster behind the woman. It wasn’t a scene of Japanese maple leaves but an aerial photo of the Disney castle in Bavaria. Turning, I looked out of the shop window and saw a small dog lift its leg against a tyre. A woman walked past pulling a wailing child by the arm. It was magic. I could see everything in detail. I looked back at the saleswoman and noticed a wiry mole on her neck. On the bench behind her was a half-eaten sandwich. In the mirror, I could see someone in a shamrock-green T-shirt wearing big black glasses. It was me and I looked like Nana Mouskouri. My heart sank.

‘So, do they make a difference?’ My mother had her hands extended in front of her. She did this when she was going to adjust my shirt or give my hair a ruffle. Her head was tilted to one side.

‘Not one bit.’ I tapped the lens with a fingernail. ‘Total waste of money.’

The saleswoman snapped the glasses’ case closed and handed it to my mother with the prescription. ‘We don’t do returns on prescription glasses. A lot of work’s gone into grinding those lenses.’ She pointed to me. ‘Very necessary with the sort of eyes your boy’s got.’

My mother’s head jerked back to upright position. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my son’s eyes.’

It was a ridiculous response but my mother did this when I was under threat. It was one of the things I liked most about her. Mum’s hand landed between my shoulder blades and I was propelled out into the real world, a world that suddenly had shapes and textures. I left the glasses on as we drove home. They made me feel disoriented and dizzy, but the thrill of being able to see was worth the carsickness. I could read names on letterboxes and see merchandise in shop windows.

‘You know who those glasses remind me of?’ Mum knew I was disappointed.

‘I hate myself and want to die.’

‘Roy Orbison.’

‘That cheers me up.’

‘Sammy Davis Jr has black frames, too, and he’s part of the Rat Pack.’

‘He’s the smallest member.’

‘Don’t forget Rolf Harris.’

‘You’re not cheering me up.’

‘Norman had glasses when he was your age.’

Mum pulled up at traffic lights next to the Whipper Snapper fish-and-chip shop. I was looking at people waiting in cars when my heart skipped a beat. Elizabeth Taylor was sitting in the passenger seat of an orange Chrysler Valiant! There was even something sparkly around her neck. It had to be the Cartier. I waved. She waved back. The lights changed and my mother put her foot down. I was about to tell Mum when I saw David Niven heading toward us in an old Vauxhall. I took the glasses off and rubbed my eyes.

A letter from the United States of America was waiting for me when I got home.

Dear Fan and Friend,

We’re delighted by your interest in the official Liz Taylor International Fan Club. You’re one of thousands of fans around the world following Liz’s sparkling career.

Full membership in the official Liz Taylor fan club is just ten American dollars per year. For this nominal fee you receive a fan-club badge and certificate. Naturally, you also get our quarterly Liz Taylor fanzine, Liz, Camera, Action!

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Don’t forget to include your money order for club membership.

Yours truly,

Barbara Bushel

President of the official Liz Taylor International Fan Club

The envelope contained a studio photo of a young Liz Taylor with her arm around a dog’s neck. There was also a quote from one of her movies: ‘“It’s a very odd feeling – to be someone’s God.” Liz Taylor as Kathie Merrick in The Courage of Lassie.’

9

Mum and Dad were having money problems. Dad said his problem was having to support a moaning wife and three thankless children. Mum said the problem was his having to support his drinking and horse-racing habits. She went out one day and got herself a job on the production line at the Tassie Textiles factory. We were each given a set of keys to the back door and warned not to let strange men or brush salesmen into the house.

Mum’s timing was unhelpful for my career aspirations. I’d just decided to take up tap-dancing after watching Gene Kelly with an umbrella and required her encouragement on the old heel-toe routine. Her abrupt decision left me high and dry. In one fell swoop I’d lost both my impresario and audience.

I struggled to adjust to this sudden loss. Mum had always been there for me after school. She was my cheerleader and I was her beauty consultant. The focus of our relationship shifted once she started work. She was tired after a day at the factory and wasn’t as switched into my pizzazz or the Golden Microphone. I had to work like hell to make her laugh or get a ‘Twinkle’ out of her and, even worse, I lost my only beauty client. I knew better than to touch Mum in front of Dad. Whenever I got her alone, I did my best to fluff and style but this didn’t give me the same satisfaction.

One day, in a moment of desperation, I bribed Carmel with a family block of Shelby’s to sit for me. I hadn’t even put all the curlers in her hair when she finished the chocolate and shook them all out. I let her go without a squeak of protest. She was now an active member of the girls’ cricket and hockey teams. She and her friends had budding breasts and thick arms. They openly smoked cigarettes and rode their bicycles everywhere in third gear. Boys were frightened of them.

A couple of dismal months had to drag by before I could appreciate the benefits of not having parents around. Under the new arrangement, no one knew what time I came home and no one told me what to do when I got there. While I enjoyed this new freedom and the extra television-viewing it permitted, I still craved an audience.

I’d started taking French at school. It was one of the elective culture lessons set aside for the last hour of every Friday. The choices were limited: debating, charity work, Bible study, crochet or French. When I discovered that boys were excluded from the crochet class, I chose French. It was not only the language of Brigitte Bardot but it also did something nice to the back of my throat. The lesson was taught by a big friendly woman with the unlikely name of Mrs French. Most of the vocabulary we learned was related to food and restaurants: my kind of language.

Jimmy Budge had also chosen French. He lived around the corner from us in a notorious bungalow in Wallaby Place. People stopped at the Budge hedge and shook their heads. Jimmy’s father was a quiet-spoken widower but a sore point with the mothers of the neighbourhood because he bred and raced pigeons. His birds flew over our houses as a massive cloud to land on his front lawn in a grey flutter of feathers. People didn’t like the pigeons. There was talk of disease and droppings. My father said Mr Budge’s hacking cough was pigeon-fancier’s lung and warned me not to get too friendly with his birds. I liked Mr Budge. He was a vast improvement on Dad. He was a friendly man and never told kids off.

Jimmy was probably the best-looking boy in our school. His sandy-blond hair was faultless and flopped perfectly over his eyes, which were slightly different colours. He told me that one eye was green with envy because the other was blue. ‘That’s what my father says. He’s got the same genetic defect. Bung eyes and lungs run in the family.’ I started walking home with him after school on Fridays.

On the third Friday, I stopped in front of our gate and invited him into the garage. ‘You want to see my amphitheatre?’

I had a feeling about Jimmy Budge. It was the way his eyes had shone when he repeated ‘La cuisine de la France’ for Mrs French.

I’d created the amphitheatre behind the firewood in the garage. From the outside it looked like a normal stack of wood but inside it was a private chamber with bedding and other personal comforts. It was where I kept my valuables and ate contraband.

The only way to get inside this secret chamber was to climb up the exposed timber framework of the garage wall and jump. I did this and disappeared from Jimmy’s view. He scrambled up the wall after me and watched as I stripped off my clothes. I was twirling my underpants in my hand when he jumped into the amphitheatre, peeling off his clothes with the efficiency of a German tourist.

I’d learned all about the German enthusiasm for nudity while staying at the Bland holiday cabin. From a sand hill, I’d observed a couple of tourists prepare for sunbathing by removing all their clothing except for their socks and sandals.

My father should’ve been happy that Mum had a job but he was more disagreeable than ever. Mum said he lacked pizzazz. He certainly had no interest in music or show business. The only celebrities he appreciated were famous thugs who played sports. At least since the Dent diagnosis he’d stopped harassing me about ball games. My Nana Mouskouris confirmed for him that I wasn’t quite right and he now avoided eye contact. This was fine by me. He’d diverted his attention to John who’d come up with the insane idea of becoming a doctor and started doing homework every evening after school. John thought this choice of career made him superior and Dad seemed to agree.

They could keep each other as far as I was concerned. I had better things to do. Jimmy had put in a word with the distributor of The Bugle and I’d started delivering newspapers with him in the mornings. Within a couple of months I’d lost weight and looked almost normal when I held in my stomach. I had to get up at five in the morning but the job gave me freedom and power. For the first time in my life I had real coinage in my pocket and no longer had to play Dad like a fiddle to get a dollar. I could buy what I liked and be as thankless as I pleased.

Some of these earnings I invested in a joint project with Jimmy: a fort based in the overgrown conifer hedge of an abandoned house. Only we didn’t call it a fort. We were too mature for that. It was a club. Using Dad’s chicken chopper, we’d hollowed out the hedge to create a spacious inner sanctum. This we furnished with a boat tarpaulin we’d found at the dump and some old cushions my mother was throwing away. We’d then created a ceiling with black polythene and hung some sheets from Jimmy’s house to create a Lawrence of Arabia effect. Our club was both private and secret. The only way to access it was by crawling underneath prickly conifer branches. We made sure no one saw us enter or leave.

The club became a busy nude and leisure centre after I recruited two boys from school, David Perk and Grant Humber. I’d figured these two out on the sports field. Like me, they regularly forgot their sports clothes and spent the phys. ed. hour in punishment, doing laps of the cricket pitch with a weighted medicine ball. Brother Punt was too stupid to realise that some of us preferred this activity to the real punishment of regular sports. It certainly beat kicking a leather bladder around a football field with a bunch of thugs on our backs.

As club founders, Jimmy and I got to make the rules. The first thing we did was appoint ourselves to executive posts and give the club a name: the JCJB Club. The next rule was another of my ideas. An entertainment hour was established and club members were obliged to either participate or listen. I got to sing Frank Sinatra and Jimmy did Sammy Davis Jr. Grant Humber could whistle but the only thing David Perk could do was make fart noises by pressing a palm into his armpit and pumping his elbow up and down. A smoking-only policy was also established. I suggested we smoke French brands. Jimmy seconded my motion and we learned to smoke the hard way, choking on filterless Gauloises.

I was inside the club, dividing a packet into four piles, when I heard David Perk arrive.

‘Corkle, let me in.’

A large, spiky tree branch functioned as the door to the club. It was easy to move from within but almost impossible from outside. This made the club impenetrable to intruders. One intruder I was particularly keen on repelling was John. I didn’t want his sort making reports to Dad.

‘Who goes there, fiend or foliage?’

‘Corkle, you know exactly who goes here. It’s me.’

‘You know the rule. Say the code.’

‘I forgot it.’ He was starting to whine.

‘No code, no entry. That’s the rule.’

‘Pore kwah?’

‘That was last week’s.’

‘Pore kwah pah?’

‘That was also from last week.’

‘It’s not fair, you change the code all the time. How can I remember French?’

I knew by now he’d be hopping from foot to foot with frustration. I’d let him hop a little longer. Perk was our least-appealing club member. He had a sneaky, unconvincing personality and had been cursed with the reddish curly hair and large dollopy freckles that were part and parcel of life as a gingernut. What Perkie lacked was panache. This was almost the same as pizzazz but with the added quality of French sex appeal. Jimmy and I used panache to rate boys at school. On the sexual panache scale I was nine and a half and Jimmy was nine. David Perk was somewhere between zero and one.

‘French confuses the enemy.’

‘What enemy, you wanker? You’re just trying to be posh.’

‘Grow up, Perk.’

‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ Jimmy had arrived and was waiting for the branch to be moved. He was the only one who remembered the passwords. Jimmy Budge understood the French Way. He read Celebrity Glitter and even looked like Alain Delon in Girl on a Motorcycle when he pouted.

I pulled back the branch and let them in. Perk came in scowling but Jimmy crawled up to me and kissed me on the lips. Jimmy couldn’t get enough of my panache and I didn’t blame him.

10

All the JCJB Club members were thirteen years old except for David Perk who had been held back a year and just turned fourteen. It was an exciting time to belong to a boys’ club, especially one with a nudity theme. Fascinating things were happening to our bodies. We monitored each other with enthusiasm, noting growth spurts and key developments.

Our activities were conducted in utmost secrecy according to the golden rule: ‘What goes on in the club, stays in the club.’ I found this rule surprisingly easy to obey. My parents never asked what I did after school or noticed that I didn’t bring friends home. They were too wrapped up in their own misery. My mother shuttled between Tassie Textiles and home and was always tired. The only real quality time we spent together any more was The Dick Dingle Hour when Mum joined me on the couch to eat her dinner off a tray. If I worked hard enough at it during the commercials, I could get her talking about me.

It was during a commercial break that Mum mentioned the changes taking place in my body: the down on my upper lip and unpredictable voice. There was something else, too, she said.

‘You’re glowing these days.’

‘But I glowed before.’

‘Yes but now you glow in a different way. What’s going on with you?’

‘Just warming up for the Tassie Wallaby. I’ll need all the glow I can get.’ I knew what was going on with me. It was Jimmy but this was not something my mother needed to know.

Mum’s eyes lingered on me for a moment. Her hand reached out and swept the hair off my forehead as if to see me better. It was too much, her look. I turned back to the TV.

With a sigh, she got up and went to the dinette, closing the door behind her. I knew she was going to call Norman. She did this at least once a week, always in the evening and always before my father came home.

Dad shuttled between the newspaper office and the pub and only came home to eat, sleep and watch sports programmes. He’d become even more uncomfortable in the role of husband and father and was incapable of maintaining a consistent standard in either job slot. His efforts came in rare bursts of activity followed by long periods of disillusionment and apathy.

One night I was woken by a series of loud thumps that made the bed rattle against the wall. The thumps sounded dangerous, like an earthquake or a volcano blowing its top. I left a sleeping John to his fate and ran into the hall. Mum was running toward the lounge in her nightdress. We stopped at the doorway.

The floor was covered in rubble. The lounge suite and my mother’s ornaments were white with plaster dust and bits of mortar. My father was standing with his back to us with a sledgehammer in his hand. He’d knocked a hole in the wall between the lounge and the sunroom. This small room had begun life as a veranda and been glassed in by the previous owner. It was the storage room for things that were never used like the barbecue and the beach umbrella.

‘What on earth are you doing, Jim?’ Mum laid a protective arm over my shoulders. I leaned into her to make the most of it.

Unaware of our presence, Dad took another swing with the sledgehammer, knocking chunks of wall flying in all directions.

Mum raised a hand to her mouth like a megaphone and shouted, ‘Oy! Dumbo!’

Dad turned, removing a pair of sound-absorbing ear muffs that he’d obviously borrowed from someone. The muffs were clean and professional-looking. All Dad’s tools and equipment were old or rusty.

‘What’s all this?’

‘I’m converting the sunroom into a bedroom. The boys need separate rooms.’

I stood up straight. I was getting my own room! Dad did care.

‘John needs his own space for study.’ He flashed a small-toothed smile. It was his stupid lop-sided après-pub smile. Dad could be uncharacteristically generous and optimistic when he was pissed.

‘My Royal Albert is covered in dust.’ Mum pointed to the tea set on the mantelpiece.

Dad was leaning on the sledgehammer, still grinning. ‘Colleen Corkle, there are two frozen chickens in the deep freeze. Won the chook raffle tonight.’

Dad was a winner. The two chickens made up for the hole in the wall and the dust on the tea set. They gave their relationship hope.

‘Why the hole?’

‘That’s the new doorway to Julian’s room. I’m going to block the side by the dinette.’

It was true. I was getting my own room. Dad should’ve won the chook raffle more often. We definitely needed a colour television.

‘How long is this going to take?’

‘It’ll be all done in a week. Mark my words.’

It took over a month and a concerted effort on the parts of John and myself. It was the only time we’d ever worked as a team. We were both relieved when Dad finally put down his paintbrush and told us to wash it and put the tools away.

I finally had my own space. No more dirty football boots and no more of my brother’s foul personality. John never hit me; my mother made sure of that. But enduring his constant jibes and sullen moods was worse than taking a punch from Carmel.

My new room was going to be spotless and decorated in grand fashion. The first thing I needed was curtains. The sunroom’s large picture windows were nice but privacy was essential. Mum said she could get polyester off-cuts from work and run me up curtains on her Bingo sewing machine. I suggested I pay half and we buy real fabric from the Blue Gum Plaza department store. I wanted proper drapes with a bedspread to match. My decorating efforts at the club had sparked an interest in interior decor. If my stage and screen ambitions didn’t pan out, interior designer was an excellent back-up career.

The fabric department was one of the most inspiring places in Ulverston. It was stacked with bolts of multicoloured material and managed by a well-groomed man in tailored clothes. Every woman worth her Bingo bought her dressmaking supplies from Des. He had shiny white satin for confirmation frocks and large bridal gown patterns for last-minute weddings. Local women treated Des like a god in his fabric department and then walked out and gossiped about him behind his back. Most agreed he was one of those. This annoyed my mother who liked to point out that Des was married. The more malicious gossips would then remind Mum that Des didn’t have children. I observed the goings-on with a wary eye and didn’t add fabric floor manager to my list of back-up career possibilities.

I’d seen Des a few times and knew for a fact that he was one of those. He wore colourful shirts and a gold signet ring on his marriage finger. I recognised a kindred spirit when Mum took me to select the fabric for my bedroom.

‘How can I be of service today, Colleen? I see you’ve got a new man in your life.’

Mum laughed as he kissed her French style on either cheek and told her she looked as beautiful as ever. I’d done her hair before leaving home and matched her handbag and shoes. Des was wearing a silky kingfisher-blue shirt that was open at the collar. I noticed the glint of a medallion. Mum put a hand on my head and ruffled my hair.

‘Julian’s choosing fabric for his curtains and bedspread.’

‘What kind of theme do you want for your chambre de lit?’ Des looked directly into my eyes, something adults tended to avoid doing. ‘Are you a space traveller, a cowboy or a dandy, young man?’