Published Stories

Mick

Gee, when the police knock on the door, out of the blue, and tell us they have Mick in custody, I shatter.

‘With the evidence we have we’ll be able to put him away for a long time,’ the CIB detective says.

He’s bailed Dad and I up down the back yard. Something’s annoying him. He keeps swatting the flies that circle his freckled face, like they’re hornets, intent on killing him, and that a single bite from them would be the death of him: that we, like Mick, are guilty.

The poor man would never be able to live out here in Pymble amidst the stables. Gosh, they attract flies like you wouldn’t believe. The suburb’s full of stables, full of horse-shit and full of flies.

‘What evidence?’ Dad asks.

‘Evidence sufficient to satisfy a judge that he was implicated.’

‘Well, did he confess?’

‘No, he didn’t confess. But there’s material evidence that he was at the scene.’

‘Well it’s obviously no secret, then. What was it, Sergeant?’

‘A piece of ribbon.’

Is he for real? “Material” evidence? I couldn’t stay quiet.

‘A piece of ribbon. Gee, is that all? It could have been mine: ribbon from my hair.’

I use ribbon all the while to tie back my unruly dark mane.

Margo, do something with your hair, is my mother’s regular refrain.

The Sergeant shakes his head.

‘No. It matches ribbon from the crime scene.’

‘If you say so. Can I at least visit him? Don’t say I can’t.’

‘Yes,’

‘When?’

‘Whenever your father brings you down.’

‘Anytime?’

‘They’re released for exercise at seven each morning. You can catch up with Mick after that.’

Dad will take me for sure. He feels extra guilty. I can tell by his breathing. I’ll skip school. The minute the police leave, having searched the house, I’m at him; Dad.

‘I told you, not to let him go with Mr Campbell. People say he’s a fascist, Dad … Poor Mick won’t know what’s happened to himself, being locked up like that.’

My dad’s too generous. I can wind him around my finger and I’m only sixteen. Imagine what a grown person can do: a big-wig like Mr Campbell, head of the New Guard.

‘He said he needed Mick to join their procession at the bridge opening. Didn’t mention anything else. Didn’t mention De Groot cutting the ribbon before old T.J. could.’

‘I know, Dad. But all the same – a fascist.’

I’d heard Grandpa, a Labor man, bag him.

‘There’s a lot of us starving with the depression, Margot. Mr Campbell wants people to elect men who’ll invest for the future. Many of the starving are poor diggers. Risked their lives at Gallipoli for king and country; for you and Mick.’

‘You served.’

‘Yes, but many of these commos didn’t. They opposed conscription and now the gutless bastards want to run the country, and share in the spoils.’

I remember walking with Mick past lines of ex-diggers waiting for a food handout, where they sleep rough in the bush along the edges of the National Park at Lane Cove. Dad says Campbell and his fascist mob can make a difference.

The poor are turning to communism, because the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. They think the government’s for the rich. I heard Dad say the commos scare the shit out of him. The only time I’ve heard him say a nasty word like that is when he described what the artillery on the front did to him. Gosh, you wouldn’t want to be in the house when he’s having one of those sessions.

That means Mick, the lucky beggar, must have got to cross the bridge, and test its iron structure and mighty pop-rivets. I bet he felt like one of those flying-machine pilots, looking down on the city as he marched across.

_____

In the morning, Plato, the cattle dog, brings in the Herald from the front gate. Sure enough, when we’ve straightened it out and smoothed down the teeth marks where he slobbered, we see a photo of Mick, dead-square on the front page, surrounded by police.

‘Ohh! he’s so handsome, Mum. Don’t ya think?’

‘Sure, love. Captain De Groot is handsome too.

‘Gosh, not as handsome as my Mick, though.’

Mum bends her head, scrunches her face as she reads.

‘Says here, De Groot was an officer in the 15^th Hussars, the King’s Regiment. That’s pretty impressive.’

‘He’s a soldier’s soldier,’ says Dad over his cuppa. ‘Doesn’t expect more of others than he’s prepared to do himself,’ he adds, when both Mum and I look at him as if he’s talking chook gibberish.

Mum continues.

‘Says he was “upset that big Jack was opening the bridge, while a decent man like the New South Wales Governor, was denied”.’

‘So? He should be upset, a bloody socialist, a ‘commo’, was taking all the credit and building for their republican cause.’

‘Does that mean there would no longer be a king of Australia if they get in?’

‘That’s right. Thousands of us fought to defend king and country, we can’t just hand over to the rabble.’

Mick would have known none of this, of course. If I don’t know about it, why would he? He was just taken for the ride. Make up the numbers, perhaps. We have to save him.

‘Can we go and see Mick, this morning? Can we please, Dad? He’ll be missing us so much.’

Dad agrees and we leave soon after, crossing to the city on the ferry. We reach the barracks by tram, passing the opening to the large courtyard surrounded on all sides by police buildings and stables, to be delivered near the barrack’s regal entrance. We look up at the oak doors towering above the sandstone stairs, and I take a deep breath to gather my courage, before mounting them.

At the desk Dad explains to the desk sergeant.

‘We’ve come to visit our Mick. He was bought in over yesterday’s Harbour Bridge affair.’

I hand him the front-page photograph in support.

‘Okay, wait a tick.’

He disappears with the clipping in hand and returns after three minutes with another file.

‘We need you to identify him.’

I hold my hands high.

‘Well, he’s about 16 … He’s got brown hair … a bit tacky and, oh, beautiful brown eyes.’

The officer smiles, flicks through his log book.

‘That’s some help, but look … we need you to pick Mick out from a line-up. Do so and you can take him home.’

‘You mean he can be released? Freed?’

‘Yep, Magistrate says he can go, as long as he stays close and is contactable, doesn’t leave the city.’

‘Oh, how exciting. Thank you, Sergeant.’

I tippy-toe up and down on the spot with one hand to my mouth, holding my excitement in, while the other grasps Dad’s arm for reassurance. The sergeant points through the window to a gathering outside.

‘See that line-up?’

I nod.

‘Which one is Mick?’

‘Nearly everyone in the line looks the same,’ I tell him, and he scrunches up his face as if to say – that’s the purpose of it, idiot.

I hesitate. I check them all, individually, in case the sergeant thinks I’ve made a lucky guess when I select Mick.

‘Don’t you know, Missy? Isn’t Mick in the line?’

‘Of course, I do. Third from the left. That’s Mick.’

At that moment Mick looks directly at us through the window. I nearly melt.

The Sergeant shouts through the window to a man standing beside the line, pointing to Mick.

‘That’s him Constable, thanks.’

He turns to me.

‘All right young lady … Margot … he’s yours to go.’

I cry I’m so relieved. I thought he would be here for months, turn into a hardened crim. It will be so good to have my boy back.

‘Oh, and you may as well take De Groot’s gear, but not his sword. He’s off to the loony bin. Won’t need it there. The constable will get it for you.’

‘Thanks Sergeant,’ says Dad, and avoids the smarty-pants look I give him regarding the sanity of his big hero.

We wait outside the police barracks for Mick to appear and, minutes later, a policeman escorts him out. The prisoner looks so much better than I expect – better groomed.

‘You sure you two will be OK to get home, Margot?’

‘Yes Dad. We’ll cross the new bridge and follow the bus-route home. You can check-up on us when you pass.’

He smiles. It probably lacks confidence, then he boosts me up into De Groot’s saddle. Mick and I turn for home. Mick suddenly shies … at nothing, perhaps his shadow: a little jittery. Nearly dislodges me. Seems excited about his release, as am I. Appears, we both can’t wait to see the view over the harbour from the bridge.

Editor’s note:

In 19^th March, 1932, Captain De Groot, a member of the right-wing New Guard, borrowed young Margot Reichard’s horse “Mick” to charge forth and cut the tape with his ceremonial sword at the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening ceremony, just before Premier TJ Ryan could.