DIARY – LOVE AT CUMBERSOME CORNER – MOTHER – PT 12

By Bruce Williams

The world’s stupidest man loved his mother. Scottie, who drank at every pub in Cumbersome every day.

I first saw him at the Royal Shakespeare, right on Cumbersome corner. It was before I’d moved in with Betty. I had approached Cumbersome like love itself. First as this vague sense of destination. Then as a source of envy or resentment. Then as something both deliberately sought and stubbornly avoided.

I had moved from Rozelle to Annandale. Annandale to Stanmore. Shopped in Marrickville. Ate in Enmore. Drank in Newtown.

My conversion to Cumbersome came via Spurs for Jesus and their Sunday arvo gig at the Royal Shakespeare, the RS.

As the Spurs were setting up, and I was settling down onto my bar stool. I’d grabbed a pile of free papers and was flipping through them, trying to find On the Street, but had to settle for this skinny little runt called ‘City Hub’. It was then that Scottie appeared at the Riley Street entrance. Nose like a toe on a head like a knee – and a neck that may have been somewhere, just nowhere immediately apparent.

His gut was prodigious, and peeping out beneath a faded, blue singlet, and above a bright new pair of pink stubbies. This singlet was no ordinary singlet, but sported custom printing: ‘Scottie: Sydney Olympics tour 2000’ in big letters. Followed by, in little letters, ‘Royal Shakespeare, Viceroy, Bank, Oxford, Empire” and so on, down to where his pink, hairy and prodigious belly began to steal his pub-list thunder.

Scottie walked in comfortable, and relaxed. And his thongs applauded as he stepped down from street level and across to the bar.

I watched him as he swept from table to table, collecting the empties, then returning them to the bar assembled in one, tall, shallow-curved glass tower.

The new bartender asked. ‘Who are you”

I sat on the bar stool close by as Scottie replied firmly: ‘I’m the Bar Useful!’

The new bartender smirked – the kind of confident smirk that’s not native to Cumbersome: ‘That’s the difference between you and me, then.’

‘What” replied Scottie.

‘Well,’ said the new bar tender: ‘I am and you’re not.’

‘What” replied Scottie.

And the not-from-Cumbersome smirker returned: ‘Who are you”

‘I’m the Bar Useful!’ replied Scottie.

‘See’ That’s the difference between you and me: I am and you’re not!’

And Scottie replied, not impatient, but just curious: ‘What”

He was fat then. Big belly. No neck. A beer in every hand and a thong on every foot.

Two years later, I was ordering two long-necks of Melbourne Bitter at the Viceroy bottle-o, when I overheard Scottie explaining to the bartender how he came to back a winner at the Wentworth Park dogs.

‘It was my Mum,’ said Scottie. ‘She just knows everything,’ he said. ‘She just knows. She just knows everything.’

I looked across to see his rheumy eyes brighten. His mother, who, to his continual astonishment, would routinely knock-off the Daily Telegraph crossword in the time it took to drain a cup of milky, sweetened tea.

There was virtually nothing that Scottie knew – except that, when seeking knowledge, go to Mum.

Another two years later, which was just about two years ago, I saw Scottie at the Viceroy for the last time. And he was thin. And drinking slowly. And his very, very faded, blue singlet, printed with details of his triumphant 2000 tour, was hanging off him like an elephant’s hide on a donkey.

As he placed his empty schooner with both hands onto the Viceroy’s table, it occurred to me that, although I’d seen Scottie enter lots of Cumbersome pubs, I’d never seen him leave one.