Passing Clouds

by Graeme Leith

  The idea was that we were to break the rocks into pieces small enough for the rock-crushing machine to handle. They showed me how to hit the rock on the correct side, so that it would split with the grain, for if you hit it against the grain the hammer would just bounce up and down and wear you out. The reward was five pounds a day for six bins, and five shillings for each bin after that. If you couldn’t fill six bins a day you got the sack, and while I was there I saw several men come and go without achieving the desired target.

  Having worked in the desert for so long, gutting, skinning and throwing kangaroo carcasses around, I was pretty fit and muscular, so I set to the task with gusto, managing eight bins that first day. The truck came to collect us at lunchtime and I headed off to find a milk bar, noticing that the other men, mostly short, stocky and broad-shouldered Italians, had extracted from their lunchboxes their salami sandwiches and enormous quantities of fruit. Few words were spoken as they got on with the job of fuelling up and when I returned from the milk bar, to my amazement, they were all asleep with their heads on the table. I, too, slept well that night, barely able to stay awake until I’d cooked and eaten some dinner. That became the pattern for the next week.

  The ‘gun’ rock-breaker was a fairly short but enormously strong, barrel-chested Mediterranean who filled a dozen bins every day. He was the only one allowed to work overtime so he would come in on Saturday mornings and fill half a dozen bins before lunch. Being of a naturally competitive nature, I decided to attempt to increase my output by an additional bin each day in order to eventually draw level with his tally, but this was easier said than done, and it was many days and a couple of weekends until I considered myself within striking distance of my goal.

  The day on which I was going to go for my twelve bins dawned clear; it was going to be very hot on the floor of the quarry where the sun’s heat was magnified and reflected from the basalt walls. We started work smashing the rocks and flinging the spalls into the yawning mouths of the bins. I was matching him bin for bin but it was harder for me; his body seemed specially designed and built for the job, and he worked with a metronomic efficiency I could not match.

  It was not yet lunchtime and we had filled six bins each but the heat was becoming difficult to bear. My God, I was glad to see that truck coming down the hill to pick us up for lunch.

  After lunch we returned to the fray. I kept up with him but it was even harder now. I would give my all to a bin and on completing it, I would look up and over to where he toiled to see him seamlessly move on to his next bin. It was halfway through the third bin that the lights went out for me and I awoke on the floor of the office with my pay envelope in my hand. My employers were not happy—they didn’t need a stupid twenty-year-old fainting on the job.

  However, things went to plan for the five of us adventurers about to see the other side of the world: Roland, Robert, Michael, Brian and me. We had our bookings for the ship and its departure date was rapidly approaching. Rob Hall and I reluctantly parted with our beloved Alvis, selling it to someone who would care for it and who, I believe, still owns it. He collected it on the night of a going-away party a friend had thrown for us. We stood on the balcony of the terrace house and miserably watched it motor out of our lives. (It didn’t bring any bad luck to the buyer, for he was a member of a singing group who were soon to become world famous.)

  Using the funds so obtained we bought some new clothes in preparation for our grand journey and were soon sardined into our five-bunk cabin on the Castel Felice, the ‘Castle of Happiness’.

  3

  England and Italy

  Castel Felice, the Castle of Happiness

  So that is how five of us mates, not yet twenty-one years of age, arrived in England in October 1960 after a lengthy journey at sea aboard the Castel Felice.

  The voyage was occasionally dull, but generally pretty interesting. And it was cheap, for the shipping company made their money transporting migrants from England, for which the Australian government paid full price, allowing them to run the return journey with cheapskate Aussies wanting to go to the Mother Country. I’d made good money kangaroo shooting but there wasn’t much left by the time I boarded the boat. When onboard we seemed to spend quite a bit of time in the ship’s middle bar, and there were various ports along the way that could burn up a few bob, too. At Port Said my funds were so low I didn’t even leave the ship.

  However, I found that I was able to subsidise my journey to some extent by shooting clay birds over the side of the boat. I had never used a shotgun before but because of my experience with a rifle I achieved some success with the clay birds, and was able to bet on myself to make some money—until people realised that I was quite good at it and wouldn’t take me on. One of the other boys was quite good at ‘sculling’ beers and he, likewise, took a modest amount from our adversaries who, for some reason, seemed to be Western Australians.

  There were some lively New Zealand girls on board and one morning we found a note slipped under the door of our cabin on ‘D’ deck, inviting us to a wine and cheese party at their cabin on the (in every way) more elevated ‘B’ deck. The party was a great success and spilled out into the corridor, or whatever they’re called on ships. Much cheese was consumed, and wine flowed from the pretty little flasks of Chianti which were, and possibly still are, wrapped in raffia and generally more distinguished than their contents. So I don’t think that the wine bug bit me there. No amorous relationships developed between any of us, but we’d made some new friends and that made the journey more pleasant.

  But I did embark on a caring and close relationship with a girl. She was a kind and beautiful person and we became great friends and lovers. It could later have become more than a shipboard romance, but due to my peregrinations we soon lost touch. I used to wonder . . . She gave me a carton of duty-free Pall Mall cigarettes before we parted, knowing that my supplies were exhausted. Seeing the price of tobacco in England, I immediately stopped smoking and sold the carton to a tobacconist in London for a good price.

  On the payroll in London

  On our first night in London we had hoped to stay with friends of a friend but only one of us was welcome, so the rest of us slept under Hammersmith Bridge, me in my suit and the others in their overcoats. From there we gravitated to Earls Court, sharing a room with six others, including a Ceylonese with a close-to-death cough, an experience I wouldn’t recommend to anybody.

  Once, maybe a year later, after a hotel bar closed, I went into a toilet below the pub. The entrance faced the street and to my surprise there were no lights on, but I had a feeling there were people there—in fact, I heard someone clearing his throat and it made my skin crawl. I struck a match and saw men standing with their arms draped over a rope that was slung across the room. I later discovered that they paid half a crown per night for that accommodation, and maybe that was when another warning—that all was not right with the world—stirred in my soul. A stockbroker could make enough money with one phone call to house them all for a year. That was as close as they were going to get to sleep that night and a bed in a room with six others would have been luxury indeed for them.

  Rob Hall had been thoughtful enough to bring some money with him to England, enabling him to take a small flat. He generously allowed me to share it with him so all I had to do then was find a job, and to that end I donned my suit and made my way to the nearest job centre, where I was informed that the only work available was a labourer’s job at Kew Gardens. I made my way on foot to their unexpected magnificence, a crystal palace rising from the mist, and followed directions to the furnace rooms.

  They were replacing some old coal-fired boilers with oil-fired ones and above the subterranean works were workmen and trucks and bricks and things. As I approached, resplendent in my suit, a man approached me and doffed his cap, saying, ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  I took the small green card that the labour exchange had given me from my pocket and presented it to him.

  His ey
es went a strange angry milky colour and he carefully replaced his hat on his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You can start work at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘My name is Graeme, what’s yours?’

  ‘My name,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, ‘is Foreman.’

  Now that I had a job I cheerfully walked the five miles or so back to the flat. My problem for the next week was going to be how to feed myself and get to work.

  ‘Foreman’ was ready for me and told me to wheelbarrow about a thousand bricks down a plank laid over the stone stairs to furnace number one. Men were breaking up concrete and doing other things in preparation for removing the boiler. After some hours I reported to him that I had finished the job and he, observing the completed task, stated baldly, ‘I’ve changed my mind, I want them in furnace number two now.’ Which meant, of course, wheeling them back up the plank. It took me quite a long time to complete the task cheerfully and report to ‘Mr Foreman’, as I had taken to addressing him. This was an impertinence for which I knew he wouldn’t sack me—he was having too much fun.

  As I was the last man on the payroll, it was my job to make the tea and this gave me the chance to go through people’s lunch packets and steal something from their sandwiches. My scruples evaporated in the face of such a ravenous hunger, but I did repack the lunches neatly. At lunchtime I went for a stroll through the glasshouses above and there, to my delight, discovered an orange tree with fruit on it. I was to visit that tree often over the next few days. At the end of the week there was not an orange left on it. And there were dark mutterings about the sandwiches, but Friday was payday.

  A couple of days earlier I had used a bit of wire to pick the cheap, ineffective locks on the ‘coin in the slot’ gas and electricity meters around the flats, so I was now travelling to work on the bus and buying the odd pork pie. If Rob was home, I could usually bludge a meal from him that night but if he was not there it was too bad. I remember once washing some potato peelings I found in the kitchen bin then boiling them and eating them with salt and pepper; they were good.

  Landladies

  The flat was in Putney, but we’d met some girls who lived at Hampstead and, on visiting them, found that suburb much more to our liking. The sands of time were running out in any case for Rob’s flat, which had just been completed when we moved in. It had been built into the ceiling space of an existing house, was very attractively painted, and had new, slightly off-white carpets on the floors.

  Rob, the artist, stayed at home painting all day and needed to have a heater running, for the weather had turned chilly. The flat had its own electricity meter that, it was easily established, was set at the outrageous tariff of one shilling per kilowatt-hour—more than twice what was charged for the electricity coming into the house. I had no qualms about changing the wiring to bypass the meter, for I owed Rob a favour for the meals he had shouted me. He promised to put an occasional shilling in the meter so that when the shit hit the fan, there would be some money in there and we could escape blame in the ensuing confusion.

  But alas, it was not to be. One night I rounded the corner to the flat to see an electrician’s van parked outside, and inside a distraught landlady berating the electrician as he tried to examine the meter to the flat below ours, tenanted by our friend, Don, one of the Western Australians we’d met on the boat. I sprinted upstairs to be greeted by an agitated Rob, who explained that Mrs Codrington-Ball had received a colossal power bill and there weren’t nearly enough shillings in the meters to cover it, much less the 100 per cent mark-up.

  Time was of the essence, for the electrician was to check our meter at any minute. Not having a screwdriver, I grabbed a kitchen knife, which I had used to perform the initial illegal deed, and, standing on the kitchen chair Rob had thoughtfully placed below the meter, proceeded to disconnect the wire and replace it into its proper, metered terminal. During the transfer of the wire, there had to be a moment of darkness and the light from the match held in Rob’s trembling fingers must have been inadequate, for the knife slipped as I was tightening the screw, shorting out on a neighbouring terminal, dramatically melting the end of the landlady’s kitchen knife and plunging the entire house into darkness.

  It appeared from the sounds below that the electrician was getting the blame so I replaced the cover on the meter, and Rob and I descended the stairs by candlelight, as any two concerned tenants would, to see what had gone wrong. The power was reinstalled and the landlady went down to her quarters, presumably for a large sherry or two. The electrician was to return the next day to try to sort out the mess and we went down to Don’s flat to have a couple of beers with him and meet his ‘bird’, as prearranged.

  During the boat trip to England, Don had made no secret of the fact that he was a virgin and didn’t intend to remain in that unfortunate condition, so many pounds had been spent at two or three ports along the way on women who were supposed to provide the service Don was seeking. Somehow this ended up with the women or their pimps pocketing the money and not providing the service. But a couple of times he had taken out a London lass who was pretty keen to marry into an Australian sheep station. With some justification, Don felt that perhaps, at last, his hour had come. So we met Don’s girl, heard her charming Cockney accent and observed her blonde hair, her tip-tilted nose, her pert breasts and her long, shiny patent leather boots. We also met her neurotic little white poodle. It seemed so simple. We would go upstairs to our flat and Don would entertain and possibly go to bed with his new young love.

  But landladies were custodians of morality then and when the poodle started barking frantically at his mistress, who was engaged in some unexpectedly violent and noisy wrestling activity with a strange man on a bed, Mrs Codrington-Ball rapidly ascended the staircase to find out what was going on. There was quite a commotion for a while which resulted in girl and dog departing into the night, and Rob and I speculating as to whether or not the union had been consummated before the moment of coitus interruptus.

  The next day was to be the moment of truth with the electrician, and there was another factor to be addressed. Painters, in their obsession with their work, can be a little absent-minded, a little careless of the sensibilities and sensitivities of other, more pedestrian folk, and Rob was no exception. He had failed to notice that in his constant toing and froing from canvas to a point where a better perspective could be obtained, some drops of oil paint had inadvertently fallen from his brush onto the ‘off-white’ carpet, which, despite the application of turpentine, had not been successfully removed. The carpet was a little more ‘off white’ than it had been.

  If Mrs Codrington-Ball came up with the electrician, as she was bound to do, it was inevitable she would observe this and there would be consequences, so I was not unhappy to be going to work. If the electrician noticed that one of the terminals on the meter showed signs of partial meltdown, that would further complicate things. And it did!

  So a short time later we found ourselves in a rooming house in the less salubrious suburb of Kilburn, where the residents, on seeing us (or perhaps anybody) in the hallway, would retreat into their rooms like startled rabbits, or crayfish backing into crevices in the rocks. We were probably noisier than anyone they’d been used to. The two girls would sometimes come around—Lois, a New Zealander, and a rather assertive American girl, with whom we would discuss philosophy into the night, until my head spun, for I had only completed Fourth Form, sans philosophy, a long time ago.

  Turning twenty-one!

  It was around New Year and my work had shut down for the holidays. I could have worked a few more days before my twenty-first birthday on 5 January 1961 but I considered it essential to leave my job and take the outstanding wages to buy the necessary ingredients for a party, which I did, and great and magnificent were the purchases. The five assembled guests were all to be spoiled rotten. I bought a heap of vegetables and a gigantic loin of pork, little bott
les of Mackerson’s stout, plenty of cider, a bottle of cheap spumante for the toast and specially selected cigarettes for each of the guests—Lucky Strikes for the American girl, Benson & Hedges for Michael, Passing Clouds in their delightful pink packet for Rob, a little packet of Old Holborn for Lois, who used to roll her own, and for me a half-ounce of Fribourg & Treyer ‘Negrohead’ pipe tobacco.

  It was a truly wonderful party and we all stayed in the bedsitter as planned. It was pretty cold outside, but in the morning we were all feeling the deleterious effects of an unaccustomed excess of pork, alcohol and tobacco—and perhaps insufficient fresh air.

  It was a Saturday and we sat around discussing the future, mine in particular, for I had spent all my money on the party. I had to get a real job, and quickly. It transpired that it was possible to get work as an electronics technician at a paper-processing plant in Kent and, as I had taken electronics as a final year apprenticeship subject, I felt I might have enough knowledge to bluff my way into a job. But first I had to get a union ticket and some tools.

  Lois generously offered to lend me some money to get me started. To my surprise the local trade union branch accepted me as a member and I was ready for a job interview, which again to my surprise I passed. I was soon on a train to new digs at the Isle of Sheppey Hotel and Country Club from which I would travel daily to my job on the mainland, over the bridge. It only took an hour or two for my co-workers to establish that I was not a qualified electronics technician and must have got the job under false pretences but, as we’d all had a few beers at the bar the night before I started work, we were already good mates and they covered for me.