Hoi Polloi by Craig Sherborne

Author:Craig Sherborne [Sherborne, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, ebook
ISBN: 9781921870279
Publisher: Black Inc.
Published: 2011-05-31T12:00:00+00:00

Yet there is no yelling talk or even any sorry talk between them. Winks grazes my chin gently with his knuckle. “I had a feeling you’d tell on me so I told your mother everything.”

Heels comes close and speaks stale wine into my face. “And so he should tell on you, shouldn’t you my little baby?” she pouts, pinching my chin and calling me her little baby again.

“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea, love,” Winks says, kissing her temple.

“I’ll have to watch out for him, won’t I half-man?” she says to me with a faint burp. She topples slightly on her heels. She blows a jet of air out the corner of her mouth to try and get a loose hair strand out of her eyes. “You’re a better catch than I thought,” she smiles blearily to Winks. “I can attract glances too, you know.” She tugs on his tie and attempts a catwalk twirl but trips into his arms halfway through it. He hugs her with a tight jerk around her hips that tips her off balance. He pats her bottom. She lets out a yelp of pretend offence, so he pats her bottom again.

They walk hand in hand to the carpark in the centre of the course, him swinging his binoculars like a rubber walking-stick, her shoes spiking the ticker-tape of discarded betting slips. There’s Uncle Chicka bending down and shouting, his shirt melted on his skin with sweat. He has gathered a dozen punters in a circle around him to play two-up. He wears his doctor’s bag over his bull-nose belly, reaches into it for twenty-dollar notes. He smells them with a grand inhaling and slaps one down on the gravel like a challenge. Winks plays Snap with it with a twenty-dollar note of his own and yells out “Twenty the tails.” The circle-men free their arms from the arms of their wives or girlies and peel twenties and tens from their rolls, hold the money high in the air for all to see, then pat the money to the ground. Other men play Snap on it: “Fifty the heads,” they yell. “I’ll take you on.”

“Go the tails,” Heels barracks, handing me twenty dollars to bet for her so she doesn’t have to bend down and get unsteady. Uncle Chicka nods, acknowledging the bet as I Snap it into place in the dust. “How you going, Digger?” he says as he nods. He calls everyone Digger, even the women. “Man your position, Digger,” he winks to me and makes a clicking with his tongue. “Go on look-out for coppers.” I wink back, not sure if he really expects me to go on look-out, or if he’s playing up to the crowd to sharpen their thrill of doing something illegal like playing two-up. I expect it’s the latter and place my hand above my eyes like a visor, pretending to scour the landscape. “That’s the boy,” he belly-laughs. Other bellies and women’s breasts, including Heels’, join in.

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