‘Shhh, child. Donchya go round sayin’ that. Ya musta been dreamin’. Now that’s the end of it. Ya goin’ an’ that’s that! An’ donchya go round tellin’ no one I hate church either. Like I said, ya musta been dreamin’ when ya reckon ya heard me say that.’
I learnt to keep my mouth shut and suffered like the saints whose miserable lives Reverend Stone loved to glorify. But I knew I hadn’t been dreaming. I was always listening to their late night talk around the kitchen fire. Sometimes Nan and my Aunties would talk about people they knew, long gone, like the young boy with corn-coloured hair, killed when the draughthorse pulling the plough was startled by a snake and turned and dragged the plough blades across his lithe body and beautiful face. Nan was a domestic in those days and she was called to ‘lay out’ the body and prepare it for the funeral.
‘That poor boy,’ she’d always say. ‘They couldn’t even find his people ta come ta the burial. In the end it was jus’ me an’ the other domestics an’ the family he was workin’ for buried him. No more than a boy, he was, couldna been more than fifteen.’
Or old Catholic Mrs O’Brien who Aunty Boo used to look after and who was well into her nineties when she passed away. She left my Aunty an old German piano, lots of Roman history books and a white ivory elephant, which Aunty loved but everyone else thought was useless.
Sometimes the Aunties would talk about things they’d read in the paper and report back to Nan, who didn’t read.
‘Bloody readin’,’ she’d always say, ‘gives people some funny ideas. I dunno how ta read but I sure as hell know how ta think. What they say ’bout them women’s liberation girls, anyway?’
Aunty Boo didn’t mind the women’s liberation girls.
‘They got some good ideas, Mum. Wanna do away with men, I think. They’d be all right if they wore proper underwear. Still, I’d like ta see ’em get ridda the men no matta what they wearin’.’
‘How can ya get ridda the men?’ Nan scoffed. ‘Where will all the babies come from?’
‘Read that in America they can make babies in science laboratories now anyway,’ Aunty Bubby ventured to say. ‘An’ there’s pills too to stop girls havin’ babies in the first place.’
‘Ahhh, see what I mean ’bout bloody readin’.’ Nan loved having the last word. ‘Gives people some bloody funny ideas!’
Sometimes they’d talk about organisations like the CWA. The Bloody Cranky Women’s Association, Nan used to call it.
Nan said she’d never seen a ‘pack o’ more sour-faced women’ in all her life. ‘Bloody gossipin’ mob, always pokin’ ’round afta church askin’ questions ’bout things that aren’t none of their business. Pretendin’ they’s real concerned about this an’ that. Damn women never even use ta pay me the time o’ day ’less o’ course they wanted a job done, some cookin’ or sewin’ for a special occasion. Then they weren’t above talkin’ ta me.’
Or they’d discuss the Feral Farmers’ Federation.
‘Bloody high country leases! Can’t move in this country now without bein’ on someone’s property.’
Sometimes the fireside talk would turn to churches, religion and those still living.
‘Them Catholics, they got some bloody funny ideas!’
Aunty Boo had maintained this ever since she’d worked in the service of the O’Brien family and been the maid for the elderly Mrs O’Brien during the Great Depression.
‘That dear ol’ Mrs O’Brien,’ Aunty Boo would reminisce. ‘She had a saint she prayed to for everythin’. St Patrick was the main one for them Irish. They say he got ridda the snakes from their country. Then there’s that St Paul. He once ’ad a different name before ’e got struck by lightnin’ on the way to Damascus an’ that made ’im write letters ta people all round the world, telling ’em what ta do.’
‘I reckon maybe that lightnin’ strike sent ’im gammon,’ Aunty Bubby said.
‘If I got a letter from St Paul tellin’ me what ta do,’ Nan lisped through gap-toothed gums, ‘I’d wipe me arse on it an’ send it back to ’im wherever he’s travellin’!’
The women laughed.
Sometimes Aunty Boo would ham things up for her family.
‘Then there’s St Jude for the hopeless, St Martin for the beggars, St Thomas Aquinas for knowledge, St Bernadette for justice. That St Anthony, though, he ain’t too bad. The ol’ lady told me he’s the saint for lost things. Poor dear ol’ thing, she use ta pray to him for everything from a missin’ glove to a lost soul in need of redemption. Hafta tell ya, girls, I ain’t above askin’ St Anthony’s help when I can’t find somethin’. An’ youse all know I never lost anythin’ for good.’
Aunty Boo folded her hands and sighed contentedly before continuing. ‘Then there’s that St Rose. Pain in the arse, that one, jus’ like our bloody sista by the same name, hey, Bub? Ya meant ta pray ta St Rose for patience but that bloody gammon one even washed ’er own mouth out with soap for thinkin’ bad thoughts ’bout others! An’ how could anyone else even know what she was thinkin’!’
Aunty Bubby threw her hands in the air. ‘Imagine if we had ta wash our mouths out with soap every time we thought bad things of others. We’d go broke jus’ buyin’ enough soap!’
The women laughed again.
‘Then there’s poor ol’ Judas. Ol’ Missus tol’ me ’bout ’im too. He ain’t no saint! They all hate ’im coz he sold out Jesus ta the Romans for thirty pieces of silver. Mind youse, I’d get sick of following Jesus round all day listenin’ ta his wild promises, that ya hafta be dead before ya know if they true or not. Thirty pieces o’ silver . . . damn lotta money ta be ridda Jesus for! Man coulda prob’ly set ’imself an’ ’is family up for life on money like that back in them days. Reckon ya can’t blame the poor coot at all.’
Aunty Boo paused to draw breath but she was really on a roll.
‘An’ that bloody St Peter that they all love. He lied three times on the night Jesus died. For nuthin’ but to save his own arse. An’ for that they made ’im their first leader, first priest, so they say. Call ’im the rock, they do, for some reason. The solid rock on which Catholics ever afta build their faith.’
She was exhausted from her disgust with this sinner and took a long guzzle of the tepid tea she’d neglected.
‘Well . . .’ Aunty Bubby said thoughtfully, ‘sounds ta me like a pretty shaky foundation for all their funny beliefs.’
But, funny beliefs or not, we still had to go to Sunday school every week – rain, hail or shine, season in, season out till it was time for us to go to school, which was an even bigger ordeal because it was all day, every day, not just Sunday.
Waiting for Petal
Petal was everyone’s darling. Everyone’s but mine. I never liked her. She just couldn’t settle. But for everyone else she was the prodigal daughter, sister and baby. When Petal came home, the fatted calf was always killed. Well, not literally, because my Aunties never killed any stock. But they did put on their best show.
The old black phone on the kitchen wall would sometimes be silent for days. When it did ring it was usually one of the many family members who had moved away. My other Aunties, except for Aunty Rose and Violet, had moved from Gundagai to more distant towns and cities. I had lots of cousins between Sydney and Melbourne, and all the Aunties and their many children always came to Nan for Christmas.
Sometimes, when the phone rang, the news would be good: a cousin getting married, a cousin with a new baby, a christening, a twenty-first birthday. But Aunty Boo always said the best news was no news at all. And she was right. More often than not the phone calls would be about a cousin in an accident, a cousin in trouble, a cousin with a broken heart. Sometimes there was even talk of drugs, beatings, courts, jails and death.
‘Them bloody cities!’ would be the unanimous response from Nan and the Aunties.
‘Like traps fer blackf
ellas, pickin’ up bad habits left, right an’ centre.’ Aunty Boo was adamant. ‘Too much mob an’ not enough ta do in them big places. S’pose it might be like that fer whitefellas too, hey?’
‘Wish Petal ’ud come home from the city,’ was always Aunty Bubby’s standard lament after one of these bad-news phone calls.
Petal lived in Sydney with Aunty Iris.
‘Petal will be all right,’ Nan would say. ‘She got a job cookin’ an’ cleanin’ with Iris.’
But she never sounded really convinced.
‘Bloody girl’s only jus’ gone twenty-three,’ Aunty Boo would start. ‘She could come home an’ train up ta be somethin’ betta than a slave fer wealthy whitefellas. Sista an’ I had no choice but ta be placed with wealthy whites. Dad wouldna had it any other way, thought being placed was a good job fer girls like us. But it don’t hafta be like that fer Petal.’
Petal could exasperate my Aunty Boo like no one else could.
‘Still I can’t see her workin’ with Iris fer too long. Petal never could stick at anything fer too long,’ Aunty Boo huffed.
The old black phone rang one wet winter day when I was playing with a box of new puppies by the fire. I braced myself for the sadness the women might be about to endure. Aunty Bubby answered the call and I watched carefully for her reaction to whoever was on the other end of the line. When I saw her face light up and split like a watermelon from ear to ear I knew it would be something good.
‘Mum! Boo!’ Aunty Bubby shouted when she hung up. ‘Come ’ere! Petal jus’ rang. She’s comin’ home on the train next week. She quit that job, said there ain’t enough work fer two, an’ Iris’s man gets on ’er nerves.’
Even though it was cold and wet, Aunty Boo was puffed and sweaty when she came in from digging trenches round the house. ‘He’d get on my nerves too,’ she heaved, trying to contain her excitement.
Nan did nothing to control her excitement. ‘What! Next week! We’ll hafta go shoppin’ an’ clear out the back bedroom. What kinda food does she like again? I’m gettin’ ol’. Can youse girls remember?’
I felt a warm trickle on the back of my hand. I was squeezing one of the puppies so tightly around its belly that it had spewed the milk it had just drunk.
‘Hey, little girls, whatchya thinka that?’ Nan asked. She also was smiling ear to ear. ‘We got Petal comin’ back ta live with us.’
I thought the no news is good news was better but knew I’d get jarred up badly if I said it, so I said nothing. Star got excited enough for both of us though, because Petal always brought good presents from the city – pretty clothes, hair clips, dolls dressed up like they were from other parts of the world, good books and magazines that you couldn’t buy in the shops in town. But still, I didn’t think it was worth it. I had only just turned six, but I’d seen my Aunties and my Nan waiting for Petal before. She came and went and changed directions with the wind. I liked it when Star and I were the Aunties’ and Nan’s babies. I didn’t want another baby like Petal in the house.
Everyone fussed over Petal. In their eyes she could do no wrong. Yet she was everything the Aunties told us not to be. She smoked. She swore. She cut her hair and wore lots of make-up. She wore mini-skirts, fish-net stockings and tight jeans that she cut off into shorts in summer. She spent a lot of time in front of the mirror and she never ate everything that was put on her plate.
And she took her sweet time. I’d had enough of waiting for Petal. I remember the last time she came home and we all went shopping. We waited for ages outside the dress shop while Petal pranced around like Audrey Hepburn, trying on the latest angora twinsets only to settle eventually on the pale pink one she’d tried on first. Then there was the afternoon we waited for ages in the sparsely shaded park while Petal got her hair treated and blow dried. Another time Aunty Boo, Star and I paced backwards and forwards up the main street while Petal tried on every pair of patent leather shoes in the shoe shop. After all that she came out empty handed and complained all the way home that the shoes in town weren’t as good as the ones in the city. Once, when she promised she’d only be five minutes in the bank, she ran into one of the girls she went to acting classes with and stood around talking and laughing with her friend while we waited in the hot, muggy car. We’d probably still be waiting if the bank manager hadn’t come along and told the girl to get back to work.
I knew heaps about Petal, heaps more than Petal knew about me – and more than I was supposed to. Not a day or a night went by without hearing some talk about her.
Petal was born on Remembrance Day, 1942. Everyone in the district knew that Nan was fifty-one or thereabouts and way too old to be having a baby. Then again, she’d had babies all her life and had always been a curiosity and a mystery to the other women in the district.
William, Nan’s husband, was seventy. Up until then he’d always kept a close eye on his wife and daughters. Apart from going to church and school, when the Aunties were young their only contact with others was working as domestics for white farming families. But the decades of hot sun and hard work had taken their toll. William had forgotten many things, and one of the things he forgot was to be too harsh on the women.
Aunty Boo had left working for the O’Brien family in early autumn of that year. Aunty Bubby had just come home too and would not be returning to her position as housekeeper and governess when the war ended. The family had said they couldn’t afford hired servants any more, even cheap ones.
November’s magic was in full flight in the late spring of 1942.
‘Never seen so many purple grass lilies an’ bluebells on the hill than the year Petal was born,’ Nan would say. ‘An’ the smell o’ the photinia an’ gum blossoms blowin’ down the slope in the evenin’ so thick ya coulda cut it with a knife.’
‘An’ it’d been so wet the heads on the grass were like big greeny-yellow Christmas lanterns,’ Aunty Bubby remembered. ‘Yes, the hill was real pretty that year, not so browned off like it usually is comin’ close ta summer.’
Aunty Bubby was always the dreamy one of my Aunties, but when they were remembering Petal’s birth Aunty Boo’s eyes became glassy too. I was never sure whether they were shiny or teary but I couldn’t ask.
‘We was makin’ our garden too, Mum, the whole time we were waitin’ fer Petal, fer when the hill’s not so pretty. Ya always said ya wanted ta be surrounded by flowers, all year round, remember?’ Aunty Boo added.
‘Sure do,’ said Nan, ‘an’ we never ’ad ta go ta church, coz William, God fearin’ man that he was, said it’d cause too much notice an’ too many questions an’ he never liked either of them things. Never liked flowers either but he was gettin’ too old ta boss us an’ he had Richie ta his-self since the older boys moved on, so he never cared to pay us no mind long as there weren’t no attention ta us.’
The news that another baby would soon arrive in the already overcrowded Stanley home aroused a wave of interest among the women in the area.
‘Where’s that Daisy Stanley?’ one well-to-do woman in a tweed suit remarked on the church steps as she craned her beak-like nose above the church crowd looking for a dark woman. ‘I’m in need of a new suit, and she should be at church anyway.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Meadows,’ Aunty Bubby, always shy but ever-responsible, ventured an explanation in her clearest voice and best English. ‘Our mother is expecting another baby an’ she’s not well an’ our father said she can stay home from church an’ she needs someone to wait on her so he said Boo . . . I mean Beulah can stay with her.’
‘What?’ Mrs Meadows’ response was so high and loud Aunty Bubby visibly jumped. ‘Another one! Another baby, when there’s a whole tribe of you already . . . and when your father’s already had the devil’s own job placing you and your sisters in decent employment and respectable marriages?’
Aunty Bubby stammered as Mrs Meadows eyed her like a bird,
ready to swoop.
‘Y . . . y . . . y . . . yes, Mrs. There’s going to b . . . b . . . be another one of us. B . . . b . . . but my father is over there, you c . . . c . . . can ask him all about it.’
‘I will indeed!’ Mrs Meadows declaimed, stomping off with her nose pointing to heaven.
Aunty Bubby and Aunty Violet overheard the nasal-voiced plum-in-the-mouth Mrs Watson whispering all too loudly to Mrs Baker.
‘That old Will Stanley’s already got one foot in the grave. And there’s a war on, for God’s sake! Who knows what could happen.’
Petal finally arrived that bountiful November. She weighed only five pounds. When old Nurse Jones came weeks later to inspect and register the newborn she commented on the length of her legs and the mop of dark hair that ever after fell around her face.
‘She’s like a little gollywog,’ the old nurse sighed.
Aunty Bubby, who’d already decided since her lonely days at the one-teacher school by the creek that Emily Bronte was her best friend, said Petal reminded her of Heathcliff as a child. A ‘dark-skinned, black-eyed gypsy’, she called him. Years later I saw the pictures of Petal as a baby that the Aunties kept in an old biscuit tin. She reminded me of Heathcliff too and looked just like Emily Bronte described him. In every photograph Aunty Bubby had taken on the old Box Brownie, Petal’s eyes are burning like black coals and her little mouth is set in a perfect pout.
Nan was delighted to have a new baby in the house. And Aunty Bubby, who was used to being active, needed something to occupy herself now she was no longer employed. Both Petal and the war effort were good timing as far as she was concerned. Apart from looking after Petal during the day, she spun wool and knitted countless pairs of socks to send to the soldiers. Aunty Boo had a sense of good timing as well. She was hell-bent on moving on from her career in the O’Brien household and the goings-on in their chapel.
‘Afta we got Petal,’ Aunty Boo told Star and me one day when we were out walking, ‘I knew I had ta make a move on them men without ’em knowin’. Them white women was right fer once. Dad was gettin’ too old fer work. Too old fer thinkin’, fer that matta, an’ I didn’t trust that bloody Richie ta look afta us ’spite all his promises ta Dad.
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