A Promised Land?

by Alan Collins

  When I woke, Solly was standing in front of me, his eyes wide with triumph.

  “You’ve wee’d yourself too, Jack, so now you can’t go crook at me any more!”

  I looked down at myself. The newspapers had blown away leaving me exposed to a street where nothing stirred and the only sound was the approaching clip-clop of horse’s hooves. Solly’s pants had dried leaving only a darker patina but I bore the damp humiliation as the sky lightened with the dawn.

  “Let’s run and get dry like we do on the beach when our togs are wet,” Solly urged, already jogging up and down on the spot. Together we set off down the road, sprinting strongly into the wind then gradually slowing down as our empty stomachs refused to pump any more energy into our legs. The red kerosene lantern swinging on the side of the milk cart brought us to a halt; the fat horse snorted steam as it pulled the cart at walking pace. We dropped behind it where the spigot stuck out. The milkman with his gallon can and quart jug could barely be seen as he weaved in and out of the front gates, silent in his sandshoes.

  “Hold the horse’s head,” I said excitedly to Solly.

  “No, you do it, I’m too small, I can’t reach.”

  “Righto, I’ll stop him and you turn the tap and have a drink like we do under the garden tap. When it’s your go, I’ll leave the reins down so you can hold on.’’

  I sidled up to the blinkered horse and took the slack reins. The horse tossed its head in disdain, almost lifting me off the ground as it maintained its steady gait.

  “Hold him, can’t you,” Solly hissed from behind the cart. I moved around in front of the horse’s head where its huge eyes stared at me impassively, its nose shovelling me forward in the chest as though I were weightless. We continued in this fashion for about twenty yards until the horse reached a patch of paspalum grass at the kerb; there it dropped its head and munched contentedly. I joined Solly at the back of the cart where he was struggling with the spigot.

  “Here, let me do it, you shrimp.” I gave the handle a vigorous twist. The ice-cold milk came out in a gusher, splashing all over Solly’s face, down his chest and flowing into the gutter. He drew back and we cupped our hands, gulping the milk like starving dogs. I could feel my stomach distending with the sudden intake; Solly had stopped and was squelching his toes in the milk banked up in the gutter.

  “Jeez, Jack, turn it off before the milko comes,” he shouted. I grabbed the handle and tried to stem the flow, which had now subsided to a thin trickle. Heave as I might it would not budge; Solly added his diminutive strength, his small hands locked over mine. Suddenly, two mottled arms were around our necks, wrenching us away from the cart.

  “Caught ya, y’ thievin’ little bastards! Think it’s not hard enough makin’ a livin’ without puttin’ up with this? It’s round to the Johns with you two — I’ve ’ad enough.”

  The milkman, chest heaving in his blue singlet, released Solly who dropped to the roadway and vomited up the milk. With an arm still around my neck, he went up to the horse and unthreaded one of the reins. As though he had done it before, he tied the rein around my wrists then led me back to Solly and lashed the two of us together; then with a free end around his own wrist, he sprang up on the cart and clicked his tongue at the horse, which resumed its amiable gait while the milko dextrously rolled a cigarette one-handed, jerking us on the rein to trot alongside the cart.

  The miracle of that nightmarish progress of a half-mile or so to the police station was that nobody took any notice of us. Ignored by the milkman, the public and the horse, we walked in tandem to its rhythmic gait, stopping only once when the milko got down from the cart to extinguish his red lantern. He took no more notice of us than if we had been a couple of heelers trotting alongside. Solly’s shirt smelled of vomit; his eyes were glazed and he walked with a sullen springless step; there was obviously not an ounce of fight left in him. I couldn’t have comforted him even if I wanted to; to my shame, I felt a mounting resentment that his shout had alarmed the milko and brought us both to our present predicament. The milkman flicked his cigarette butt away. With practised ease, he swung himself down from the cart and went to the horse’s head.

  “Bloody soon have you two little buggers locked up,” he called back at us. Grabbing the bridle he urged the horse into a trot and ran alongside it. The slack reins tightened around our wrists and we were jerked forward. At the end of the road where the tram tracks curved out of sight I could see the blue light of a police station. I pointed to it and gasped hoarsely to Solly, “Nearly there, anything’d be better than this.” Shafts of sunlight sneaked between the shops and houses and the horse’s damp flanks gave off a warm animal smell. Suddenly the cart stopped. We were outside the police station, a narrow-fronted Edwardian building of the style that would have done equally well for a bank or a church except for the ornate ‘GR’ above the entrance.

  The milkman came up to us and paused with his hands on his hips. For one moment our eyes met and I thought he might let us go, then he shook his head as though fighting some kinder emotion. He untied the reins, linked his arms through ours and propelled us up the steps into the police station. There was a moment of comedy as the three of us tried to get through the doorway. Then the milkman released me and pushed me ahead. “In you go, Ikey,” he growled.

  The hair rose on the nape of my neck. “Mick, Mick, Catholic prick,” I shouted over my shoulder but all I got for my abuse was a stinging clout over the ear and a roar of laughter from somewhere ahead of me. The milkman pushed us up to the counter. I could see nothing but an expanse of cotton undershirt and heavy braces; Solly’s eyes were dead level with the cedar edge, gouged by time like an old school desk.

  “These bloody kids was thievin’ me milk, Sarge. Bold as y’ like they was an’ then they left the bloody tap run and all me milk ran out.” He bent down and hoisted Solly up on the counter. “They’ll put the pair of yers into the bad boys’ home, that’s what they’ll do — won’t yer, Sarge?”

  The sergeant hooked his fingers into his braces and rocked back on his heels. He was the biggest man I had ever seen; his thinning red hair and mottled face sat atop a girth as generous as the milkman’s horse. Instinctively I felt I had nothing to fear from this avuncular giant who now looked past us with a quizzical smile at the excitable milko.

  “Do you want to make out a charge, Perce?” he asked in a half-serious tone. “And while you’re at it, we can talk about the SP you collect and Mrs Moloney’s complaint of watery milk.’’ He pressed a bell on the counter and a young constable appeared.

  “Stan, get these kids a cuppa tea, will you.” He turned to the milkman. “Now, Perce, where were we?” But Perce was gone; through the open door we could hear him geeing up the horse, the rattle of his cans echoing down the empty street.

  Stan came back with two thick cups with ‘GR’ in red on the side. The scalding sweet black tea was thrust into our cold hands. “Sorry we haven’t any milk, boys,” he said, then laughed uproariously. “I reckon you’ve had enough of that stuff anyway!”

  The sergeant sat down at his paper-laden desk taking no notice of us as we slurped at the hot tea; I watched his stubby fingers turn over the pages of a leatherbound book. He took a blotter and used it to run down the entries — down one column, up the next, turn over the page, down again — then stop. He held the blotter at the entry and looked up at us then down again.

  “Jacob Kaiser, aged thirteen and Solomon Kaiser aged nine of The Balconies, Beach Road, Bondi.” He closed the book softly and came over to us.

  “That’s you two rips, isn’t it?” I liked the sound of our full names; except from schoolteachers who made stage-Yid jokes about them, I had never heard anyone pronounce them with dignity before. Solly looked to me for objections but I had none; he got down from the counter and stood proudly beside me.

  The sergeant indicated two chairs. “Sit down, boys.” He delved into a desk drawer and came out with a packet of sandwiches. Opening them he looked at the fillings,
shook his head and said quite sincerely, “Sorry, can’t offer you these, the missus put ham in ’em.” He turned the glowing radiator toward us, leaned back in his swivel chair and said, “Bit thin, aren’t you? I always thought Jewish kids were fat. Blimey, when I was stationed at Waverley I used to see them going to their church on Saturday, dressed up to the nines, plump as saveloys. Just like the Dago kids.”

  Solly had been watching him intently; I felt sure that had the policeman moved suddenly, Solly would have been out of the chair and on the run again. There was silence except for the big clock ticking away high up on the wall. It was a little after seven — about twelve hours since we fled from the Children’s Shelter: for Solly and me, an expansion of time that aged us with experience and bewilderment.

  I said: “How do you know who we are. Have you got tracker dogs or something — like Rin Tin Tin?”

  “Look, come over here and I’ll show you.” Behind a tall bookcase there was a radio receiver. The sergeant flipped a switch and beckoned to Solly, who came forward nervously. “Put those headphones on, young’un and listen.” Solly did so; they fell over his ears but not before his eyes lit up in wonderment.

  “They’re talking, Jack” he said in awe, “all about cars and things.” There was a high-pitched oscillation and Solly ripped the headphones off.

  The sergeant switched the receiver off and said, “We got the message from the Rocks Police that two boys had given them the slip and jumped on the Gladesville ferry. We had nobody free to look for you last night but I intended to look myself this morning.” His eyes twinkled. “Fancy robbing poor old Perce of his milk — you could get twenty years for that!”

  Stan came back into the room and looked at the sergeant expectantly. He shifted his bulk in the creaking chair and mumbled behind his hand: “Let’s not rush this, Stan. I’d like to ask the kids a few questions. Bring us some more tea and find some bikkies.’’ When Stan had gone, he leaned forward and said: “I should take you back to the Shelter but, Christ, you’d get into more strife. Now, how about telling me what’s going on, eh?”

  The awakening day, the warming tea, the sound of trams rattling by outside and the reassuring bulk of the policeman without his jacket all conspired to relax me as I told him of the events that had brought us to this point. At only two stages in my recital did he show any reaction. When I told him of the salesman’s frequent visits to The Balconies, he murmured, “the bastard”; the death of our father brought out a further “poor bastard” and he shook his head. I described Carmel in hateful terms, refusing to call her mother, only stepmother. Solly’s body stiffened and he opened his mouth, but thought better of it and said nothing. Stan came back with more tea and a plate of arrowroot biscuits.

  “Gawd, Stan, is that the best you could do? Never mind, dig in kids. Now, tell us about your Uncle Siddy. Is he your Dad’s brother?”

  Solly said importantly, “Uncle Siddy wears a diamond ring and he’s got a car, a big one, just like a police car!”

  “Go on,” the sergeant said admiringly, “y’ don’t say — and has he got a telephone too? Would you like to ring him?” Solly looked at me for guidance. “Has he, Jack? Has he got a telephone?”

  I shook my head. “He’s in the country somewhere,” I told the sergeant. “He — he buys and sells things.”

  The thinnest edge of authority tinged the sergeant’s next question. “Would you sooner we contacted him or maybe Mrs Kaiser — or shall I call her Carmel?”

  Had I been older and wiser, I would have recognised the policeman’s ploy of offering two unattractive choices, knowing I must choose the lesser of two supposed evils. As it happened, the reply he got was less than satisfactory. Solly was in no doubt and plumped for Carmel while I said Uncle Siddy in a take-it-or-leave-it voice. By the time they found him, I thought, anything could happen — we might even escape again, go up the bush, live like the kids in Ethel Turner’s stories, fish in the Murray and sleep under a wagon with a cattle dog to guard us …

  The telephone bell cut into my daydream.

  “Yeah, yeah, they’re here Bob, caught steal — found ’em asleep in a tram shed. Bloody shame about the old man …” There was a pause while the sergeant listened. His big hands clenched into fists, the veins rose up like knotted string.

  “I don’t care about the coroner, you’re not taking these two to the morgue and that’s flat! You get off your arse and find a bloke called Sidney Kaiser, the old man’s brother. Let him go, not these poor kids.” He slammed the phone down and seconds later it rang again. “Oh, it’s you again, Bob. You’ve got who there? Mrs Pearlman? From the what? Hang on, there’s a tram going by wait, I’ll write it down, now slowly: Mrs Pearlman from the Hebrew Philanthropic Society and she wants to take charge of the kids — have I got it right?” The sergeant listened carefully for a bit longer, scribbled on his pad then hung up the phone. “Did you hear that, Jacob?” he asked. Not waiting for a reply he stood up, signifying that as far as he was concerned, this was the end of the affair.

  “I’m to put you two in a taxi and send you to Mrs Pearlman at” — he referred to his notes — “the Maccabean Hall in Darlinghurst Road. Now, the big question is: can I trust you two young rips to behave yourselves?”

  I looked at Solly; to my amazement, he was sound asleep, his head sunk on his chest, his breathing soft and regular. I stood up without disturbing him and said quietly in my best adult voice to the sergeant, “Yes, you can”. He put out his big hand and I shook it.

  “Look, Jacob,” he confided, “I know the Yids — er, Jewish people — have a good name for looking after their own, I’m sure everything will be okay. I remember when Steeny Isaacs was stabbed in his shop in Paddington how all the family came round, even a funny little rabbi fella. In no time at all, that family was back on its feet. You’ve got to respect ’em for it. One word of advice though Jacob, stick with the little bloke — he’s going to need you.” He called out to Stan to get a taxi. I sat down again and the sergeant shuffled his papers officiously until the cabby slouched into the police station. He took him aside, there was a whispered conversation, then the sergeant pressed a pound note into his hand.

  I woke Solly gently, took his hand and led him, still half-asleep, into the cab. I sat in the back with my arm around Solly; the ticking of the meter lulled me to sleep too and I knew no more until the driver was standing by the open door. “Here you are Ikey, at the Jew’s Hall, ha, ha, lucky I got paid first eh!” He hauled us out and left us on the pavement.

  THREE

  Solly leaned against a lamppost and asked, drowsily, “Do we have to run again, Jack?” I shook my head, took his hand and led him up the long flight of stone steps into the foyer of the building. There were hundreds of names on an honour board and a marble soldier’s helmet below it. In the dim light I started to read them. Suddenly I stopped and grabbed Solly excitedly. “Look up there, Solly!” I shouted exultantly. “Sidney Kaiser, it says — that must be Uncle Siddy — he was in the war and there’s his name!”

  Solly said, “That’s nice, Jack,” yawned and sat down immediately on the marble helmet.

  Discovering Uncle Siddy’s name on the honour board had a strange effect on me; I felt it somehow gave our family real substance, proving that I actually existed. If I ever doubted there had been a mother named Alice, a father named Felix and that we once led a loving life in Bellevue Hill, I had only to return here and look at that name perpetuated in gilt.

  Suddenly a woman appeared silently at my side. She followed my staring eyes then said in a metallic voice, “You’ll get a stiff neck, Jacob.” I said proudly: “That’s my Uncle Siddy’s name up there.” She raised her arm and pointed to another column of gilt names with stars behind them. “See there — Pearlman, Norman? That was my husband. Now, you two are Jacob and Solly Kaiser aren’t you?

  It seemed to me that the whole world knew who we were; what was there to be gained any more by running? From now on, we would be identifiable to whoever wa
nted to find us. I wanted desperately to be anonymous and at the same time to be able to come here and look at this unalterable evidence of my existence. I could see we were in for another interview. I felt wary, even truculent towards this slightly built woman in her self-effacing, subdued print dress, who nevertheless had an unarguable air of authority. I stood almost to her shoulder, could see the tendrils of hair that escaped a tidy coiffure, enjoy, in an indefinable way, the pressure of her breast against my arm. Swallowing hard, I tried to subdue the pleasure it gave and drew away from her. In a gruff voice, I ordered Solly not to sit on the helmet. He rose languidly and asserted his presence by declaring: “It was my Unce Siddy too.”

  Mrs Pearlman said: “Come into my office, boys. Would you like a nice hot cup of tea?” Solly and I looked at each other, our cheeks puckered and we burst into laughter — pent up, hysterical frightened cackling that echoed around the marble foyer. Mrs Pearlman made no effort to stop us; she waited unmoved until it ceased then led us, unresisting, into her office, a small windowless cubicle whose chief adornment was an almost life-size photograph of a soldier. She left us alone with him to guard us while she fetched the tea.

  “Now,” she said, as she handed us tea in pretty floral cups, “I suppose you are wondering how I came to know about you. Do you remember Mrs Stone, the landlady at The Balconies? Such a sensible woman, I wish there were more like her who knew the right thing to do in such circumstances.’’ She paused and sipped her tea. “Mrs Stone has told me all about you and about your poor unfortunate father.” Her eyes rose to the picture on the wall and she murmured softly, “So many good men die.” As yet I did not understand her gratitude to Mrs Stone; while she talked of a home for Jewish children where they were cared for and brought up to respect their ancient faith and how we must not be allowed to become Wards of the State, I hardly listened. My thoughts were of Mrs Stone in the bath and if she had ever discovered our peeping and even told Mrs Pearlman.