Coorparoo Blues and the Irish Fandango by G. S. Manson

Author:G. S. Manson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781891241895
Publisher: Dark Passage

3

By the time Jack had got down to the stop on Stanley Street, waited for a tram and then ridden it back to South Brissie station, he’d got the workings of a plan. He jumped on a West End tram as it slowed through the intersection, and got off a few stops later outside Sol’s hock shop.

“How’s it goin’, me old mate?” he greeted the old man as he came out at the ringing of the tarnished bell over the door.

“I’m alive. What can I help you with, my friend?”

“Mate, I need a lens for me camera, one that does real close up stuff – a magnifier or something.”

“You becomink a spy perhaps, mister Jack?”

“Nah, fuck that malarky. I just need a real close shot on a photo, so I can get some detail.”

“Yours is a Zeiss, I’m recalling?”

“That’s what ya sold me.”

“They make such beautiful things, the Germans, yet they have wolves in their souls. Such a pity.”

“It’s more than a fucken pity, sport, they’re a pack o’ bastards. I know, I’ve killed a few.”

He rarely said anything like that, and he pulled himself up; they both fell silent as the old man handed him the lens.

“This will do the job. Forty pounds.”

“You’ll break me, y’old bastard. Look, how about I borrow it for a week? Here’s a fiver.”

The old man’s face scrunched up as he did his sums.

“But Jack, what if some fellow comes in and wants to buy this thing? I lose thirty-five!”

“Get off the grass, you old dingo. The bloody thing’s got more dust on it than the Birdsville track! It’ll still be here when we’re both dead.”

“Such a bargainer . . . Ay, if I had a son like you.”

“Speaking of the family, how’s the daughter these days?”

“I could tear my beard out the way that pig treats my daughter. He was sent to punish me, this one. He hits her now, I’m sure. She won’t say, but a father knows these things.”

Jack arced up.

“Any man who hits a woman isn’t one, for my money. You give me the address, I’ll go round and belt that prick so hard he’ll be shitting teeth til doomsday. Just say the word.”

“Please, my friend. I have enough trouble already. I know you mean well.”

“I’m fair dinkum. I’ll bash the cunt.”

“That’s my worry, my friend.”

Jack realised he’d scared Sol and backed off. The old bloke probably had enough grief without him storming into it. A quiet word was one thing, a good flogging something else again.

He handed over a blue one and pocketed the lens.

“See ya in a week. mate.”

As he got to the door he turned and asked, on a whim. “Mate, do you recall that guitar ya sold us a few months back?”

“Of course.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“Spain.”

“Yeah, I meant how did you get it?”

“From a Spaniard, of course.”

He went back to the counter.

“A few of them about, is there?”

“Not so many around here, just a few refugees from the war, but many more working up in the canefields, I believe.

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