by Paula Hayes
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Gospel According to Leo
Nuts for Balls …
Anna sat down and set up her laptop—Leo called it her magic box and lifted it up in the air to examine the shiny white keyboard. “Awesome!” he joked.
“No messing around Leo, we need to get into your head,” she said briskly. “You know, capture some memories and try to work out why you have one foot in the grave and your bum on my chaise.” She looked sideways at Leo. Was it just a dream?
“What do you want to know?” He slumped forward on the table and attempted to roll a smoke.
Yep. It was just a dream. Friggin’ subconscious!
“Tell us about your childhood; tell us how you met Les and how you came to haunt Aggie. Just tell us your life story,” prompted Anna, while praying that Dylan would keep his face shut today.
“It will be short,” quipped Dylan.
“Now remember Dylan, don’t interrupt. Leo is going to talk and I am going to type this time.”
Dylan placed his hands on the mantelpiece and hunched operatically forward. “Why do you always pick on me so. This interview was my idea … and I’m not taking my bottle top specs off.”
“Shut up Dylan,” said Jacqui but she patted the chair next to her affectionately. “Come and get a front row seat of the transcript. So exciting.”
“Words forming before our very eyes, riveting stuff Jacs. What’s next, watching paint dry or cockroaches copulate?” Never the less he turned and moved toward her, sitting down with a sullen pop. He folded his arms and looked at the screen, feigning boredom while containing his panic.
“Wait! I have to take my specs off. Jacqui has six eyes and the screen looks oval shaped. It’s crazy baby!”
Anna snorted and started typing.
“Remember you must type EVERYTHING that is said in this room, Annakins.”
Anna rolled her eyes and snorted again.
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH PRIVATE LEOPOLD NOLAN
14TH FIELD ARTILLERY BRIGADE
54TH BATTALION 5TH DIVISION
LATE OF THE 10TH LIGHT HORSE
2/5/2013 1400HRS
Present: Anna Grey, Natalie Grey, Jacqui Van Eeden and Dylan Ray.
A: Go ahead Leo, start at the beginning … you know … when you were a kid.
L: I was an only child. I lived across the road from a house full of McNamaras. That is when I was there.
A: Where else would you be?
L: When I was a nipper, Mum used to get sickly, her cough sounded a bit like Dylan’s cough … you know … wheezy. Dad went prospecting for gold in Kalgoorlie. He made a packet and bought the house in Brown Street, East Perth. He went back to make enough for one of those automobiles. He never made it back, accident in the mines at Boulder. Mum and I were all alone. Dad’s family was in Ireland and Mum’s family lived in Germany. When she was sick and couldn’t look after me, the nuns took me in. They were very kind but it wasn’t a place for a child. Sometimes Mary Ellen would come over and give Mum a pot of soup, but she was often indisposed herself. When I got bigger I looked after Mum and myself. Mum would sew and embroider. We got by. Sometimes money would be wired from Mum’s relatives in Europe.
N: So you lived across the road from Les. It’s all making sense now.
L: Yes. I used to watch Dan and Les play cricket in the street, with a stick for a bat and sometimes they had a ball and sometimes the ball was a gumnut or screwed up newspaper. They were older than me. If I was eight then Dan might have been twelve and Les was about fifteen. I was very shy.
A: What happened to the shy boy!
L: Very funny! I would watch them play from inside the house from the front room. But Mum would cough so much and sometimes I couldn’t bear it and so I would sit out on the front verandah. Les waved at me, Dan made a face. Dan was a bit agro and wanted Les to keep his mind on the game. They were both lanky fellows. You could tell they were brothers even though they had different colouring. Les had a headful of dark straight hair. It kind of flopped around and he had these big brown eyes whereas Dan had thick curly blonde hair that he kept short. He was always hacking at his curls with his pocketknife. He hated them. He had pale blue eyes. But the shape of their brow and nose was identical.
(Silence)
Dan’s hair was a lot like yours.
A: I was waiting for you to say that.
L: Les would do all these tricky moves and clown around for me. He could walk on his hands and do back flips in the air. He could touch his tongue to the tip of his nose and flip his eyelids back. He made me laugh. I tried and tried but I couldn’t do either trick. Dan would do cartwheels too. They had to watch out for the horses pooh. First swear word I ever heard came from Dan’s lips. He had cart wheeled head first into a steaming pile of horse business. Dan was as mad as a cut snake. Les laughed himself silly at the sight. I didn’t dare smile. I wanted to prove to Dan I was worthy of his company.
Les would give the ball a good crack and sometimes it would end up on the roof. Les would stand on Dan’s shoulders and swing himself up onto the windowsill and climb up on to the roof like a cat. It was like the circus had come to town. But better. He made me laugh.
Les invited me to play one day. I was so nervous. I had butterflies in my stomach. Dan was really cross at Les for asking a ‘baby’ to join in. I didn’t want to let Les down. I was tall for my age. I had been doing all the household chores since forever and had grown quite strong.
I hit that ball and it went flying and I ran as fast as I could and scored a six. Best moment of my life. Les clapped and stamped and shook my hand. He said I could be Captain of the Australian cricket team one day and stop the Poms from claiming the Ashes.
Dan scowled and said he supposed I could play but there were to be no baby tears and he got to double up as umpire. His authority was not to be questioned. Dan was a great stickler for the rules. But Les just loved having a lark and running about.
A: You know there is a Women Ashes cricket team now? Actually it started in the 1930’s but serious in the 1990’s but still does not receive the coverage the men’s teams get, thanks to the ‘powers that be!’
L: Really?
D: I despise cricket.
J: Stick to the interview Annakins.
A: Go on Leo. Keep talking.
L: So every time they played in the street, I would join in with them. I rarely went inside their house but that was all right by me. Mrs. McNamara ran a tight ship and she had enough kids of her own. But I was so happy to be allowed to play in the street with these lads. It was like Christmas every time Les gave me the whistle to join in.
Dan and Les had two older brothers, Joseph and Laurence who had left home and were working at the new furniture factory nearby. It made all kinds of stuff for Boans in Town.
The game would stop the second that one or both of the older boys came home to see their mother and the family. The two older lads would whistle and yahoo from the top of the street. The two younger boys would throw down their bat and ball and run to greet them. They would shake hands, pat backs and say mercilessly unkind things to each other, that would leave them all in stitches, falling about the place in laughter.
Joe and Laurence would pat me on the head and once Joe gave me an orange. Never seen such a thing. He had been picking fruit at an orchard in Guildford.
Once Laurence brought home a cake. A girl who was sweet on him had made it for him. It was in an old tin. He took the lid off and proudly showed us. I can still remember its shiny white icing and red cherries. Les invited me into the house to share it with them. I fell to the rear of the lads, nervous as a kitten I was, so proud to be invited in. I was fairly bursting with pride. I remember Mary Ellen was at the kitchen sink. She looked like she had been crying. She heard the ruckus and turned around and embraced her boys. They flung their arms around their mother and she cried into their shoulders. They were
all pretty tight.
“Crikey Mum, you are jiggering the lid off the cake tin, what a grip you have,” Laurence squirmed out of her hug.
Mary Ellen replied, “Glory be to God, a cake. Just what the doctor ordered.” It was the first time I had heard the Lord’s name taken in vain.
We all sat down around the table, this very table. She cut a huge chunk out for Mr. McNamara, the Old Man. She carefully wrapped it and put it aside and then divided the rest up. There were four brothers and myself and four sisters. I had never paid much mind to the girls. They were not allowed to play on the street. I had noticed them in Church but I could never take my eyes off Les. He would mimic the priest like he was a vaudevillian … such a wag. God, he cracked me up.
The youngest girl Gladys, well she lay on the sofa wrapped in a knitted rug. The eldest sister Veronica brought a small slither of cake and propped her up tenderly. She fed it to her crumb after crumb … she was nice. But Gladys was too poorly for cake. I remember her hair was wet with sweat. She made me think of my own Ma. I put my unfinished piece in my pocket.
I looked up and the two middling sisters were staring at me, Daisy and Agnes. (Silence.)
They were the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen.
I smiled at them, Agnes remained all hoighty toighty but Daisy smiled at me. I excused myself, thanked Mrs McNamara and made for home. They would hardly miss me in all the noise. Laurence was telling a story about the baker’s daughter and Joe kept butting in with actions to go with it … apparently the girl was well endowed—Joe was miming big bosoms. The laughter was uproarious. Mrs McNamara was beaming and she had her hanky over her mouth to smother her laughter. Tears poured from her red bleary eyes.
Daisy slipped away and followed me to the door.
“Don’t you like cake?” Daisy asked, quite rudely too as I remember it.
I said, “I like cake just fine, but I want to share it with my mother.”
“I see you playing with Les and Dan all the time,” she said. Then she asked me how old I was. I told her I was nearly nine. She said she was nearly nine and Aggie was nearly ten, Veronica was thirteen and three quarters and Gladys had just turned six.
“Gladys doesn’t look well,” I said.
“She is very sick and the doctor has just been in to see her.”
“Is that why your Mother was crying?” I asked.
“Yes and because of the baby.”
“What baby?” I asked.
“We lost our baby sister last week. The Lord took her for an angel in His Garden. Ma had a baby in her belly and then she didn’t. I didn’t see the baby but I could hear Mum wailing. Now it doesn’t look good for our Gladys,” she wiped her nose on her smock.
“What is wrong with your mother?” she asked straight out, just like that.
“She has a bad chest.”
“Is she going to die?” asked Daisy, just like that, bold as.
“No, I don’t think so.” I replied. I had never thought about it. I felt the cake in my pocket.
I said, “Goodbye Miss Daisy, see you again soon.”
Anyways, Ma was sitting up at the table sewing and drinking tea. She was having a good day. She was a dab hand at embroidering and sewing. She took in sewing to help us out. People paid a pretty penny for her workmanship but it was time consuming and it’s hard to do delicate stitches when coughing racks your bones.
I sat down at the table and put the cake on her saucer. Even though it was a bit squashed, she was so happy. I asked her if she was going to die and she laughed and said not if she could help it and I was more likely to be done in by breaking my neck trying to copy the lads across the road. That was if I didn’t get pounded to death by the horses’ hooves of Mr. McNamara’s cab.
We ate the cake together and I told her all about the children across the road. I tried to copy Joe and Laurence’s humorous way of telling a tale by flapping my arms about and Ma spat her tea out from laughing so hard.
It was one of the best days of my life.
N: Wow Leo. If only you’d told me all of this back in the Nineties.
L: You never asked.
N: Sorry.
(Weird silence)
N: It’s not weird; it’s a thoughtful silence.
A: It’s weird Mum.
N: Let’s pause for Tim Tams. Since you moved in Leo, my need for sugar has soared again.
L: Again, more like always.
A: That’s not fair Leo, I am craving sugar too.
L: Maybe you need to sweeten up. Sometimes you look like you swallowed a lemon. You get this funny looking vein thing here. (Points to temple)
A: I know about the vein.
L: I am knackered too. (Leo has disappeared.)
INTERVIEW PAUSED