Julian Evans - Transit of Venus

S OMEWHERE IN S YDNEY , a water-city with a gothic heart and an unquenchable thirst, there is a fat man with a sunburnt face called Norman.

He was in his mid-seventies, at a guess. He was wearing a pale grey suit and a boater with a purple hydrangea in the hatband. A transparent polo shirt stretched over his stomach like pork muslin; his rough, mottled face gave him the look of an old stockman who had spent his life under the sun. His hands were raw at the knuckles: the left clenched the knob of a blackwood cane which he tapped at with the palm of the other, revealing the impatience beneath his courtesy.

But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were a hazy grey-blue, like the colour of far hills, unnaturally bright. The rest of his appearance made him faintly comical. His eyes had a suggestion of lunacy.

The pubs in Sydney are not places to strike up casual friendships. Full of raw-faced men in tiny shorts, they have an air of fuddled calculation. If Australia were still a prison colony, these drinkers would be working out how many days and years they had left. As it is, they work out how far they can escape with drink, and take out their discontent on strangers. In a pub by the docks where they had strippers every lunchtime, a wharfie leaned over and hissed in my ear: Er you a fuckin pom? Yer all fucking pisspoor, except for Missis Thatcher. An hour later, at a hotel in the business district, a blond man with the soused features of a fallen angel said: Dontyer hate fucking wogs? He stuck his chin out and wheedled for the answer he wanted. His cousins in South Africa wrote to him regularly, extolling the virtues of apartheid. To underline that his oratorical powers were undiminished by alcohol, he added, Oyve drank twenny-five Heinekens, but his coordination was so poor that as he said it he was pouring the twenty-sixth over his shoes.

I thought I would be safe in the Occidental Hotel, a sedate place of echoing bathrooms and recent immigrants. I ordered a brandy and soda. When it came, a Sydneyite down the bar with delicate red ears stood up unsteadily.

Our beer not good enough for you?

I shrugged and said yes and waited for the fight to develop, deciding I would only have one chance to hit him before the whole bar was on me. I was aggrieved enough to hit him, and persecuted enough to think the bar would take his side. But suddenly he thought better of whatever he had had in mind. Fucking snob, he said it was a change from fucking poms and fucking wogs, at least Ive had enough. Then he staggered through the double doors, still holding his beer glass, and I heard the glass smash in the street outside.

Norman had witnessed the third encounter. I saw the boater and the hydrangea and the steady, bright stare and thought: Another madman. But he bought me a brandy and soda and said, You dont want to take any notice of that. Its only your accent. He fished a card from the breast pocket of his jacket. Anything I can do. You only have to let me know.

The card said, Norman Garvey, Hon. Order MBE, Chairman, City Construction Ltd, and gave his office and home phone numbers. There was no address.

Norman fixed his pale gaze on me. What are you doing in Sydney?

For ten days, I said, I had been trying without success to get a passage on a ship to the western Pacific. The answer was always the same. At one shipping office the clerk in charge of schedules looked up and said bitterly, Ive worked here for fifteen years, and if I cant get a passage you certainly cant. At Darling Harbour a Yorkshireman just in from Auckland, drinking cheap Scotch with a woman whose powdered bust jostled at her neckline like puppies in a sack, gestured around the narrow, dark officers mess: Its all cargo, cargo, cargo now.

Norman hoisted himself onto a stool and began to complain about his rheumatism.

If he had been younger he would have taken me there himself. I went to sea at thirteen, had my masters ticket at twenty and a half. He was staring over my shoulder. I turned round. A blonde girl in a white teeshirt stared defiantly back. The hydrangea wobbled as Norman raised his boater to her and said, Youre a very beautiful young woman.

To me he said, You should give it another try. Go back and ask for the bloke who signs on the crews. And remember, anything I can do.