The story of Timmo and Ozzie

By Sian Prior*

The story of Timmo and Ozzie is Sian Prior’s reflection following a visit to Timor-Leste

Once upon a time in the southern hemisphere there were two young lads named Ozzie and Timmo. Ozzie was a big boy from a well-off family whose mother fed him copious quantities of red meat and plied him with fresh milk, which made him grow bigger and stronger every year. Timmo was a small child from a poor family. His Portugese step-father worked in a factory, his mother was a home-maker and the three of them lived together in a small flat, not far from Ozzie’s house.

One day when Ozzie was playing in the kindergarten playground, he was threatened by a couple of other big boys who fancied the enormous lunch that his mother packed for him each day. They pushed Ozzie to the ground, grabbed his bulging lunchbox and left him lying there with a badly sprained ankle. Timmo found Ozzie crumpled in the dirt, crying his heart out. He helped him up, put Ozzie’s arm around his own thin shoulders and led him, limping, inside to the kindergarten teacher. The teacher rang Ozzie’s home and when his mother arrived to take her son to the doctor, she heard all about how little Timmo had looked after her injured boy. She thanked Timmo with a big hug and promised to reward him for his kindness.

When they were old enough, the two friends both went to the same local school. Ozzie had grown fat, but Timmo’s family couldn’t afford to spend as much money on food as Ozzie’s could, and Timmo remained quite thin. When Timmo turned eight his parents separated and his step-father returned to Portugal, so there was even less money to go around at Timmo’s place.

There was an ex-army bloke with tattoos and bulging muscles who lived in the flat next door to them. He’d had his eye on Timmo’s mother for a while. After Timmo’s step-father left, the bloke made his move. He started walking into their flat unannounced, stealing things and threatening Timmo’s mother with violence if she didn’t provide him with sexual favours. When she locked the front door, he bashed it open with his big shoulders. When she continued to refuse his demands, he started hitting her. When that didn’t work, he turned his attention to young Timmo.

One weekend when Timmo was playing over at Ozzie’s house, Ozzie’s mother noticed bruises all over the small boy’s back. She was shocked and embarrassed, but didn’t say anything to Timmo or his mother. Not long after that, Ozzie stopped hanging around with Timmo in the school playground, and Timmo was no longer invited over to his place on the weekends.

Timmo’s mother was caught in a trap. Their neighbour had threatened to kill her son if she called the cops. But after enduring several months of violence, she finally rang Ozzie’s mother and poured out her terrible story over the phone. Confronted with the grim details, Ozzie’s mother had no choice but to act. After all, she still owed young Timmo a debt of gratitude for looking after her son in kindergarten. She called the police and told them what was happening. When the neighbour found out, he gave Timmo and his mother one last terrible beating before the police took him away.

Timmo eventually recovered from his bruises, and Ozzie began playing with him again. One day when they were mucking around in Ozzie’s father’s shed, they found a couple of bottles of Coke sitting on the work bench. Both bottles were open, and one contained only a small amount of Coke. The other one was almost full. Both boys wanted the full bottle, but before Timmo had a chance to ask for it, Ozzie grabbed it and ran out of the shed. Timmo drained the dregs of his bottle and went outside into the garden.

There he found Ozzie kneeling on the grass and retching violently. His lips were covered in something black and sticky, and he looked up at Timmo with tears in his eyes. ‘It wasn’t Coke. It was oil!’

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