The Old Anzac
Three x 3.6 lengths of spout with two short returns, stop-ends, pops and downpipes. Not a massive job, even for a single tradie with a half-pie adequate helper. Ordinarily. For a plumber that gets out of bed each morning.
Seven or eight days in a row—bar one—Greg was due out. Seven or eight times it was a hundred per cent. Raring to go, a couple of times the night before on the phone. Hardly any playing up these days, doin’ nuthin.
In the mornings the voice immediately told the story in the first whisper, the first low croak.
One of the problems was Easter. A lot going on.
Everywhere else the town was dead, vacant and ghostly. In Greg’s corner there was a lot going on through Easter.
A new early-thirties girlfriend was another factor. His stomach muscles were killing him, the old dodger complained in a squeak one morning. Often the girl wouldn’t leave until 4am.
— I’ve got to take everything I can get at this stage, he hoarsely whined that morning.
It was the girl more than the gear these days. Natalie might have popped the occasional pill, but that was all.
Once or twice one of the usual rogues led Greg astray with an offer to shout him that was too good to refuse. Turning the phone off to shut them out didn’t always work; his place in Jackson Street was easy to stake out.
Then there was Anzac Day. Greg had never worked on Anzac Day. Anzac Day was the only sacred day in Greg’s calendar. During the big project down the road that had stretched into the third year, we had worked Good Fridays, Christmas Eves, birthdays. Not Anzac Day.
The old man had built a flat out the back of the house in Chelsea for granddad and grandma. His big mistake. From then on the marriage went down hill. Greg’s principle had always been that a good gal was one who could be separated from her mother. The ones who clung were bad news; there would always be trouble brewing .
This was in the time before Greg needed to take whatever he could get.
Gran gave granddad a hard time. The old Anzac however outlived her all the same, fetching ninety-four with one leg four inches shorter than the other.
Two days he had laid on the beach at Gallipoli, before they got him onto a relief boat.
The English doctors wanted to amputate. They had no experience with gun-shot wounds. An Indian doctor who had served in the Boer War decided to re-set the leg; give it a go trying to save it. Granddad would have been fucked otherwise. On his return Gramps worked as a chauffeur in WA for a large wheat farmer, the only job he could find.
Same as every year, Greg watched the dawn service on the telly. Hour or hour and an half. Early wakes had been the order of the day in the past. Nowadays it was hard hoisting Greg up before eleven, but not for Anzac Day.
Parliament House, Canberra had the last regular job. Fair while ago now. Since it had been little projects here and there.
Eventually we got to the guttering Wednesday round noon. Greg needed to be picked up and driven out in the Beast. The Christmas before he’d been done for .09.
The passenger side on the Beast didn’t open, nor the tailgate. Ignition switch had to be drawn from the socket and pressed with the alternator light ON. First start every time these ten years, never failed.
Quick pit-stop at the scrap merchant in South Melbourne to cash some odds and ends. All the lads in the yard knew Greg.
Segue into the office. Greg knew the boss, he had the run of the place.
The 1860’s brass bushel and peck pans that the yard had picked up along the way was something worth showing. Original government measures engraved and marvellously formed. The pans used to do the rounds of the farms in the horse and cart. Undeniably impressive.
On the job the ladders were arranged, a string line stretched, before the brackets were hammered up. One. Two. And three. Properly spaced.
The first cut of the gutter though brought the realisation— the wrong angle brackets had been ordered.
45 degree instead of 90s. Forty-five was the angle of the cut, that was right. But the bracket required was the 90 that fitted two 45’s.
It had been a while since Greg had done roofing. Like the old gutters we had taken down the week before, he was rusty.
— It’s always my fault.
— ….You’ve got the shits for some reason.
Greg was a master disarmer. The toughest magistrates in the land, hanging judges, had been made to laugh.
During the afternoon numerous phone calls as usual. Liz to organise the bringing out of her old boiler. $50 bargain likely to give another ten years; well worth keeping as a spare. The serious heavy Steve who packed a gat, or roscoe—to impress the fellas around the place rather than squeeze, you’d guess. Greg had loaned Steve his scales a few weeks back and something had gone wrong. Rock had been trying to get him for days. Rock wanted a couple of hand basins installed in his salon for nothing. A few times he had shouted Greg up in the flat and he thought he owed him. Not considering the use of the flat, the lobbing without notice, having to watch him pull the pud on his couch each time once the gear was kicking in. A couple of times Rock had brought up hookers who Greg poked, while Rock sat back on the couch stroking away, juiced up with lubricant. And he thought he was owed.
Three spout brackets hammered up, a cut and one pop—unrivetted or siliconed. The remainder was for tomorrow.
NB. Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day was originally devised to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who served in the Gallipoli Campaign, their first engagement in the First World War (1914–1918).
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