From screen to page

Extract: Sweet Jimmy by Bryan Brown

The debut book from beloved Australian actor Bryan Brown, Sweet Jimmy, represents a startling new voice in Australian crime fiction. Here we present an extract in lieu of Brown’s appearance at the cancelled 2021 Byron Writers Festival.

Boys will be killers.

It was a gentle knock. Agnes had been waiting for it. Hoping he would be on time. Such a lovely fella she thought. That’s why the kettle was on, with a freshly baked sponge cake on the table. ‘Feed the man meat’ was a silly expression. Where did it come from? Who knew? Should be ‘Feed the man cake’. He’d have time for that before he began. Agnes beamed as she opened the door to him: ‘So punctual.’ He smiled. ‘Come on through. Got a surprise for you,’ she said. He had one for her too. There were three of them. Two were brothers, Johnny and Jimmy. The third was an older cousin, Phil. By five years. They were Eastern Suburbs boys. Coogee. It was the midseventies and, even though The Beatles had elbowed The Beach Boys off the charts, the beach was still the place to be. But not for Johnny, Jimmy and Phil. They didn’t surf. They thieved.

Phil started when he was fifteen. He’d wander into Surf, Dive and Ski or David Jones, try on a jacket and wander out. No one was on to him and he had a new jacket, which he sometimes offloaded to a schoolmate for a few bucks. Then, after a while, he got requests. Made a fair bit of dough. By the time Johnny and Jimmy were in their teens, they were on Team Phil. That’s what Phil called it. Jeans and Tshirts. Socks and undies. Whatever. Phil knew how to get rid of it. And the boys had pocket money. Plenty of it. Then they graduated. Break and enters. Not much break though. Around the beaches it didn’t need to be. No one locked their doors. Knock. Knock. ‘Hey, Tony!’ If the door was answered, they were told ‘No Tony lives here.’ ‘Stupid bugger’s given us the wrong address. Sorry missus.’

On to the house a few doors up. Same play: ‘Hey, Tony!’ If no one answers, slip round the back and try the back door. Usually unlocked. If not, on to another. No breaking down doors. No need. So now it was TVs, radios, jewellery. You name it. Eventually everything sold.

Phil came from a family of nine. His father and Jimmy and Johnny’s dad were brothers. Jimmy and Johnny were a year apart and always hung out at Phil’s. More fun in a house full of kids, with them having no brothers or sisters. Phil was a dare devil. The two boys gravitated to him. He never bought a train or bus ticket. Bullshitted he’d lost it or something. Always got away with it. Chicks loved him too. In the back row of the picture theatre, kissin some chick while the movie played. It was an adventure hanging out with Phil. And then Phil got a licence, even though he didn’t have a car; not one he owned. But it wasn’t hard to knock one off though. Phil knew how and he showed Jimmy and Johnny. They’d go on rides to Newcastle or Wollongong, and they’d do a couple houses. ‘Hey, Tony!’ Same plan. Leave the car there and nick a new one to get home. Never got caught.

When Phil was twenty, he and the boys knocked off ten surfboards. The silly owners had stashed them under a fella’s place who lived right on the beach. Easier than carting them home. And anyway, who’d knock them off? Phil, that’s who. He knew the owners—blokes he’d sold gear to. He swore to them it wasn’t him, but said he’d try to find out who the thieving bastards were. He sold them to some wouldbe surfers from the Western Suburbs. They surfed Cronulla, so no way the boards’d be seen around Coogee. Phil got the boys jobs. Concreting, like he did. Hard work, shovelling concrete. Still, he had to explain his money away somehow, cos the only other skill he had was thieving. But it wasn’t the thieving put him inside. It was the aggravated assault. He was cleaning out a house behind the Coogee Bay Hotel one arvo. The two boys were working, but he’d pulled a sickie. Nicked a car. Found this empty house and was filling a duffel bag when a bloke walked in. ‘What the fuck are you doin?’ ‘Robbin ya,’ said Phil. Then he bashed the bloke with the halff illed duffel with clocks and radios and CDs and videos. The bloke went down. But Phil was shat off that he’d been interrupted and kept on bashing the bloke.

Then the bloke’s two mates came in and bashed the shit out of Phil and rang the cops. About twelve months into his jail time, Phil was called into the superintendent’s office. ‘We’re putting you in the garden, mate. You shovelled concrete, so now you can shovel dirt.’ Phil didn’t mind. In fact, it gave him a new lease on life. Stopped him thinking and started him reading. About flowers. All sorts. Especially flowers that liked full sun, because that’s what they were going to get at the jail. Marigolds and snapdragons. Geraniums and zinnias. Cornflowers and sunflowers.

And bugger me dead. Phil had a green thumb. The garden sprouted colours. Orange, white, purple, red, pink, blue and yellow. Sunflowers were definitely his favour ite. And boy, could they grow. He had some over twelve feet high. And they were the best yellow. It was like looking at the sun.

This is an edited extract from Sweet Jimmy by Bryan Brown, published by Allen & Unwin.