Bridge of Triangles

by John Muk Muk Burke

  “Is that ours, is that ours? Isn’t it big. It must have lots and lots of rooms.”

  For the first time in Sydney the kids seemed excited.

  “It’s bigger than I thought too,” said Sissy with a puzzled look on her face. She went to the back of the car and lifted the large suitcase out. “Jesus that’s heavy.”

  “Well, let’s go inside then, shall we?” and the lady picked her way over the muddy holes to a door of green boards. Stepping up two small steps she put a large key into the key-hole and turned it. There was also a grooved brass knob which rattled as she gripped it.

  “Well, you go in. I’ll be off now. Your furniture should be here soon. Well, ah, goodbye.”

  Leaving the key in the door the lady carefully weaved her way over the puddles. She wore high heels. She hunched her back and her head shrank into her neck as she walked away to the car in her cheery red suit.

  Sissy stepped into the house. The four kids crowded around her. They stood in a large room with walls that went only partly to the roof. The windows were tightly shut and there was an unused stale smell. The kids hurtled across the wooden floor boards exploring the place. That didn’t take long. There was one large bedroom and a smaller one.

  “Aw, it’s not very big,” said Mary, with a look of disappointment. “Where will I sleep?”

  “I’m sleeping here!” announced Joe, as he stood under the only window in the long room. “Then I’ll be able to get out the window!” He’d already thrown the windows open and was pivoted on his waist across the sill.

  Meanwhile Chris and Keith were exploring the front room. They delighted in the enamel sink with its dull terrazo draining board. Chris turned the single tap; cold, discoloured water sputtered out and eventually cleared and flowed. It smelled like no other water Chris had ever smelled.

  “Look Mum, look—a tap inside—a tap inside.”

  “Don’t waste water youse kids.”

  High up in the roof was a single bare light bulb. It was operated by a long dirty string trailing down. They took turns at pulling the cord until Sissy told them off for wasting power. These words caused a ripple of excitement to run through all the kids. They took up the admonition with each other for the sheer joy of the words, “Don’t waste power youse kids—don’t waste power!” They now lived in a house where you could waste power because it had this mysterious power. Chris looked at the dirty string and was full of wonder. He looked again at the tap. The furphy at Waterbag Road had been the training ground for careful use of water. But power, this was a new idea which would take some getting used to.

  The walls were simple divisions made from sheets of fibro and in the bedrooms the painted framework could be seen. The kids continued to investigate—tapping on walls, pushing the windows open, checking the lights in the three rooms over and over.

  “Where’s the lavvy?” asked Keith.

  “There’s another key here—it must be outside,” Sissy said.

  The combined bathroom and lavatory was at the end of the long block and was shared by each of the four flats. It smelled of rancid soapy water and mould and other people. A water heater with an inverted funnel for dropping paper and sticks into its interior stood at the end of the stained and chipped tub. Chris remembered the shiny bath at Grandma Leeton’s gloomy house—the bath where once the old lady had scrubbed him till his skin hurt. That was the only proper bath he’d ever had. He wouldn’t rub so hard if he had to get into this tub. The excitement grew as each new discovery was made. Only Sissy looked worried as the incomplete family sat about the front room; three kids on the floor, with Joe perched on the terrazzo sink and Sissy on the step rolling a cigarette. They could do nothing else till the furniture arrived.

  “Can we get a TV Mum? It’s got power,” said Chris.

  “We’ll see son, we’ll see.”

  A ute loaded with the furniture edged its way as close to the flat as it could get. Two men unpacked the pile of stuff and carried it inside. There were three single beds and one double, all with stained kapok mattresses; a dressing table with many small ornamental looking drawers; a wardrobe with a cracked mirror; a kitchen table and five chairs of a scratched dark green colour; a collection of mismatched crockery, and a cardboard box of cutlery and cooking gear. The flat already had an electric stove but there was no fridge. There was another box with sheets, pillows and thin grey army blankets.

  A single bed was set up in the front room for Mary. Another went into the long room under the window for Joe. It had jangly black knobs decorating the rails at its head. The double bed, which had many more and larger jangly knobs, but of brass, was set up in that room for Chris and Keith. The remaining single bed went into the small room. Sissy would sleep there. The boys had the dressing table and Sissy had the wardrobe.

  “You and me can have this one Mare,” said Sissy.

  Joe took great delight in arranging the furniture in the boys’ room. He used the dressing table to divide his bed off from the two smaller boys. The family had never used sheets so it went unremarked when Sissy hung these at the windows. Her dream of living in a flat in Sydney had started.

  All she had to do now was find a job.

  The fragmented family began to shape this new beginning with the little routines which map out lives. Sissy cooked sausages on the electric stove. The trailing cords became for the kids merely things which worked the lights. Despite the meanness all about Sissy set her jaw and told herself that everything would be alright—alright.

  The Leetons had been allotted this flat by the Welfare. The flats were, strictly speaking, for immigrants, but an exception had been made for Sissy. She was treated as an emergency. In fact there were a number of Koori people scattered about that sprawling, regimented, ramp-connected collection of huts. But Sissy would have nothing to do with them. Her determination to make it by her own efforts had no room for the memories of the life she’d left far far behind. Sure, she’d write to the Old Granny—Harry could read the letter to her and Paula. But they were all down there and she was going to make it here—in Sydney. No, she’d left all that struggle and suffering behind her. If only she had known what struggle and suffering lay ahead.

  Not a dozen miles away the crashing waves of the ocean beat against the tall cliffs and surged around the rocks as they had done for thousands of years, utterly beautiful. Softly quiet, the thick bush held the twinkling glow of campfires. And then the gaolers had arrived. And the bush had rung with the torment of men and women in irons as the trees were felled and the ground dug up. One by one the twinkling lights went out—never, ever to be re-lit. Until in dumb imitation Sissy cautiously fiddled with the electric element to cook a few sausages.

  The night was not silent like at Rose’s. Here was a spread of humanity all doing human things. Children crying, adults swearing, television sets urging their messages, pots being banged, dogs barking, older kids tearing along the ramps shouting, and all the thousands of sounds and smells blended together into a common mass with a common purpose—a new beginning in a new country. Even after the lights were out and only a glow from the street lamp outside Joe’s sheeted window shone yellow into the long room, the noises didn’t stop. While Chris lay in half sleep, disturbing, strange sounds—human sounds—flowed easily through the thin fibro walls separating each flat. This was the closest he had ever been to strangers.

  The boy was being re-formed, like soft clay under the feet of the city: pushed into shapes by others who passed and pressed into his flesh and soul in the darkest of nights. And when the light came in the mornings he would be twisted into something quite unrecognisable; no longer known as a bush boy—one of Girlie’s mob—part of her family, part of the old gnarled river gums and part of the broad flat river over which those gums had leaned forever. The worst part was that the boy had only begun to get a notion of how the world was seen by others. Now this view threatened to overwhelm and smother him. Intuitively he feared that the smell and taste and promises of this new world were fo
ul, shallow and ultimately treacherous. He moved closer to Keith’s warm back and felt the rough wool of his jumper.

  The Sydney days warmed and the two smaller ones learned various ramp routes to the school. Joe and Mary had to catch the electric train along a few stops to their high schools and they quickly learned the way and the names of the stations. Sissy learned that finding a job was not as easy as she thought. No matter how she pleaded and insisted that she would work hard the answer always seemed to be the same: washy smiles which said there was nothing at the moment. No, they had just stopped taking on any more until some time next year. So the woman walked around the industrial suburbs or took buses to not too distant factories in her search for work. Although she collected the child endowment and had Welfare assistance with the rent money she knew she must get a job. The Sydney dream was not coming true.

  Meanwhile the family lived largely on devon and bread and jam.

  The older kids had train tickets provided weekly, but the shame of going to school with a lunch of jam sandwhiches wrapped up in scraps of paper or sometimes without lunch at all kept them home more often than not. Chris felt deep shame at going to school in old torn clothes and would pretend to be sick rather than feel the stares and taunts of the other kids. Of course if Chris stayed home then Keith did too. And then it was an easy matter for Sissy to let Joe and Mary stay home to look after the smaller ones.

  After a few months of frequent absences the authorities came round to investigate. The authorities came in the person of a short little lady with a rosy face and a handbag which contained a blue-backed notebook. On the day she arrived the kids were all playing in the bullring. The bullring was a circular area about the size of two tennis courts. It was between the puddly road under Joe’s window and the scrubby wasteland at the end of the settlement. Its surface was uneven with clumps of cutty grass and be patches of earth. Kids had been calling it the bullring forever it seemed and although its original purpose could only be guessed at it was now perfect for scrappy soccer, bike races and gang wars. The wars could be plotted and waged from the safety of forts partly buried in the deep red clay trench which circled the bullring. The short little lady must have followed the noise all the way round the flats until she found its source. The sight awaiting her made her grope for her notebook. With shrieks and warlike menace Joe was in the act of jumping from his window. The others were riotously celebrating the razing of a rival fort. The sheets of thick lino which had once been the roof over their enemy were now well alight with viciously hot orange and yellow flames.

  The lady shouted, “Are you a Leeton boy? Stay there, I want to talk to you.”

  Joe was instantly suspicious and took, off up the ramps. At his cue the others ran too. The roof of the fort flared up and acrid black smoke belched into the air. Drips of flaming liquid lino plummetted into the gully floor. It was the best part of the fire but the other three kids didn’t wait around to see it. They took off after Joe. Up the ramps and away through the maze of huts. The lady would have no hope of following. But she would have plenty of time to write her report and make her recommendations. Her face grew rosier as she scribbled into her blue-backed notebook. That very day Sissy had found work in a frypan factory. It was just as well.

  Before many more days had passed the rosy faced lady arrived again. This time it was evening and Sissy was at home. The kids saw her as Sissy opened the door. They bolted into the long room and Joe climbed up the frame-work and peered over the partition, all the while making silencing signals with his fingers over his mouth. The lady spoke long and quietly to Sissy on the doorstep. She handed Sissy some papers. She wrote in her blue-backed notebook. She seemed to be peering in behind Sissy’s back to the front room with its meagre bits of furniture.

  Sissy Leeton received notice of the court case a few weeks later. She ensured the kids were in their tidiest clothes and they got the train the few stops to the self-important suburb which held the district courthouse.

  A stern brick building with a flag pole leaning out over the footpath, the court house had rounded arches supporting verandas on three sides. The children sat on slatted brown seats while a policewoman hovered nearby. Sissy had gone into the building. After some time another lady came out and Joe was led through the double doors with their frosted glass crowns into the gloomy interior. Silent minutes passed. Mary was then led away. Chris feared that his turn would come soon. He edged closer to Keith. Keith edged closer to Chris. The lady kept watch over them, smiling occasionally. But his turn never came. After a little while Sissy and the older two came out.

  “Now let’s get back ’ome. And none of ya bloody muckin’ round from youse lot. Ya lucky you didn’t get sent back to ya father. Or a ’ome.”

  “What happened?” Chris asked. But what had gone on behind those frosted crowns he never was told—not even by Joe or Mary.

  So home the family trod and trained. And the vast city swallowed them up in its disregard for the reality of people. Radios shouted of lawn-mowers that could be had if only you brought your money with you. Newspapers screamed of rapes and murders round the railway stations and scared everyone, including Sissy, with their wire-enclosed warnings of a maniac they called the Kingsgrove Slasher.

  The Leeton mob saw little of Aunty Rose those days. Sissy left for the frypan factory each week day before the kitchen window turned from black to grey to reveal the night-damened ramps that connected the flat to all those hundreds of others. The kids were left sleeping. Later they would eat their Weet Bix with lumpy mixed-up milk and dawdle off to school with the packages of newspaper-wrapped sandwiches Mary threw together—or if it was the day after pay day, Sissy might have left a few coins to buy pies.

  Joe and Mary set off to the station and Chris and Keith joined the throng that grew in number and noise as the network of ramps converged into the main one that ran like a backbone through the settlement. The Leetons lived at the end of one of the last ribs and on their way to school Chris and Keith passed a number of huts before they saw any other kids.

  One of the first kids Chris met was Barry. It was Barry who soon told them to meet him on the main ramp up near the shop at night and he would show them where they could watch TV.

  Just as in the mornings dozens of kids wound Pied Piper like to school, so too at night they filed to three of four of the flats where there were television sets and where the owners seemed not to mind too much if fifteen of eighteen kids squeezed into the smoky front room to stare at the flickering grey and white images. Some of them would let the kids stay till “God Save the Queen” was played. Afterwards they might go and throw stones onto the roofs of the huts where the funny people lived. Funny people were those unfortunates who lived by themselves and wore sallow looking cardigans even in the heat, or those whose doors were never opened but TV’s could be clearly heard inside.

  One hut that got pelted fairly regularly housed a grey looking woman with her teenage son. The boy was gangling and dim looking. He wore heavy boots and khaki overalls. He could be seen sitting on the step of their flat staring—just staring right ahead. His mother was sometimes seen shuffling along the ramp on her way to the shop. She carried a cane shopping basket and looked only at the floorboards as she went. The boy seemed never to leave the step—he sat and stared all day every day.

  It was Barry too who first showed them the quarry that gaped into the earth behind a stand of wasteland trees and tall reedy grass. Barry seemed to know everything about that settlement.

  Life for the Leetons found its own routine. Sissy never missed a day at the frypan factory. For the first time in her life she bought some new clothes and covered her face in make-up. On Friday and Saturday nights she would go to the pub. To prepare for this ritual Sissy would sit at the kitchen table in the low hut and apply powder and lipstick before a small round shaving mirror. The kids watched, fascinated. Rose started coming around. She might arrive mid-afternoon and by six o’clock the two sisters would be dressed up, made up and excited a
s two kids. Rose would advise Sissy on which shiny gold necklace or which tinkling bangle looked best with her outfit. Sissy would try many and the kids would offer their own advice. The background was filled with the strident calling of horse races on the shiny new radio Sissy had bought after working a few months.

  And so as the two sisters set off in their bright clothes to the bus stop on the busy main road in front of the settlement, the kids would marvel that their mum had given Joe paper money to buy their tea and Aunty Rose might have given Mary some silver coins, “So’s youse kids can go and buy yourselves some lollies later.”

  Sometimes on Saturday afternoon the kids would go to the pictures. It was Mary who’d come home from school full of talk about the pictures. So with no discrimination they would run and walk to the next suburb and watch whatever was on. After they would traipse back home vaguely disillusioned. Often on their return Sissy would have already left for her night out.

  Saturday nights marked the start of the saddest intervals for the smaller kids. Joe was old beyond his years and had already discovered bowling alleys, cigarettes and girls. Mary spent many hours away with friends in other parts of the settlement. Chris and Keith roamed the ramps looking for someone who would allow them to sit on their floor and watch television. They nearly always found a place and settled down between the bodies of other kids the owners had also taken pity on. Sometimes, when the two boys would knock sheepishly the answer would be, “Yeh, alright, but I can only take one.” Then Chris would push Keith through the door and go along the night ramps to where he knew someone else owned a TV. The worst parts of these Saturday nights was when the owners prepared their own suppers. Cups of steaming Milo and a plate of cake or biscuits. Very rarely would the visiting kids get a biscuit, unless someone arrived drunk late in the night clutching a bag of chips or a chocolate.