Published The Advocate, March 12, 2005


FOR weeks after my old Pommy mate Steve died, I rang his mobile phone to hear him say in his proper English phone manner: ``You've rung Steven Tracey - sorry I can't come to the phone right now.'' I left messages asking what the weather was like where he was; whether he had any inside tips for Saturday's races; or to give him curry about the latest pathetic effort by the English cricket side. I also left him abusive messages for not returning my calls. Eventually I stopped ringing because the sound of his voice became too painful to bear. He was a cricket tragic who still wallowed in the glory days of the English cricket team circa 1954, and was a passionate follower of his beloved West Bromwich Albion - The Baggies - which he lived to see elevated into the English Premier Division for one glorious year in 2002. Steve's health was as rickety as the English batting order. His spine was crumbling from cancer. While undergoing arduous sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, he still managed to make it to lunch. He worked as a sales manager for a print company that produced labels for some of Australia's best wine makers. As an occupational necessity, therefore, he was always at lunch in the company of wine people who he blamed for leading him astray. Yeah right. At home one morning, he put his foot on the side of the bath to dry between his toes. Next thing he was in agony on the floor. A sliver of corroded bone had sheared off a lower vertebra and had embedded itself in his sciatic nerve. He screamed a lot, he said. In hospital, one scan led to another, and the medicos found the tumour. In the final months there was a constant stream of mates at his bedside. The nurses said they had never seen so many grown men openly express their love for another man. They do when it matters. When I went to see Steve, he was lying in bed with his back to the door, his right hand inside the back of his jocks having a good old scratch. He went to shake hands; I patted him on the forehead instead. I asked after his health. ``Let me put it this way,'' he said, ``I'm not buying any green bananas.'' On the next visit I brought him a bunch of the greenest bananas I could find. He died and the funeral chapel was filled to overflowing. The speeches went twice as long as the booking had allowed, and the next funeral's confused mourners added to the throng at the back. And from somewhere above I could hear Steve muttering grumpily: ``Make it snappy, you're taking too long; I'm off to an eternity of wine, women and song.'' Last week, on the first anniversary of Steve's death, I rang his mobile phone again and heard the Telstra machine voice say: ``The person you have called is unavailable.'' Steve would have loved that.