by Gary Seeary
The party seemed to kick off after that, with everyone beginning to mix and let their hair down. Lettie and I finally managed to meet a much happier Mrs Parmenter, a lovely lady to talk to, so interested in Lettie and my life, even though her own worries mustn’t have been far from her mind. Enid asked Lettie if she would like to help Elaine and her make teas and coffees for some of the guests, a fair excuse perhaps for Elaine and her Mum to get to know Lettie better, and to catch up on the latest gossip.
I gravitated towards the laundry, knowing that’s where most of the blokes would be, close to the beer. William was there, talking to a tall, gawky looking fellow, who must have just arrived. The tall man, about the same age as William and I, was holding a beer bottle in one hand, a half-full glass in the other, and a rolly stuck out of the corner of his mouth. This was the type of bloke I was used to.
“Grab ya self a glass, young man, and we’ll get ya lubricated,” the tall bloke urged, as soon as I walked over to get in on their conversation.
I grabbed a cold glass and got back in a flash.
“Now, lean ya glass over, my friend. Ya don’t want it spillin’ all over the shop, do ya?”
“You’re a lifesaver, mate,” I said, before I took a long sip. “I’m Seb.”
“I know, and I’m Charlie. Charles Hopes Esquire, that is. At your service,” he announced, before bowing like a nobleman and then shaking my hand.
“Seb, this is the man the history professors go to, to get their articles edited. Can play a bit of cricket, too. Though, I suspect he uses it too often, as an excuse to avoid getting involved with the Aid committee. We love him anyway,” William sprouted, his voice raised, perhaps enjoying Mr Parmenter’s home brew too much.
“Bill, I think you’ve imbibed too much of Blake’s belove-ed golden amber. I will be at the Bourke Street stand on Saturday, and, of course, I wouldn’t miss out on the ‘Spanish’ debate, Monday week. So stick that in ya pipe, old fella,” drawled Charlie, perhaps a little tanked himself.
“Which parties, unions or societies are you involved with, Seb?” Charlie asked. “If you’re like Bill that would be about a dozen?”
“I’m not in any, can’t afford it. Not allowed to anyway, my foreman would kill me,” I replied, being a hundred percent honest.
“His foreman needs a visit from my twin brothers, hey Charlie,” William chipped in. “They’d change his tune.” He looked at me as if it would have only taken a nod to make it happen.
“I wonder if those twins are human sometimes, Bill, they’re so big. They certainly would be handy around the campus at the moment, would scare the pants of those bloody Campeins. Pity they never sat the Merit Certificate!” Charlie added, knocking down his full glass of beer in one go.
“Let’s go and see what’s happenin’ inside,” William said, perhaps recognising he needed a breather from the homebrew.
Fortunately, someone had taken control of the gramophone, not allowing any more of the ‘Charleston’ to be played. One of my favourite big band tunes, Benny Goodman’s ‘After a While’ was playing at high volume as Charlie, William and I worked our way towards the centre of the house. I could even have a dance, if I found the right girl.
‘Goody-Goody’ had just been put on the gramophone, when we left the main corridor and headed into the former dining-room, where Mrs Parmenter and her friends had danced earlier in the evening. There were at least forty people on the packed dance floor trying to copy the latest swing moves, Elaine in the far corner of the room going through a pile of cylinders. I looked around for Lettie, but couldn’t see her until the spin came around in the jive. Then, I saw her being twirled around by a man, an older man, on the far side of the room.
Of course, Lettie could dance with whoever she wanted, but I was just a little worried she mightn’t know how to handle an older man, who is determined to get what he wants.
I stood watching Lettie, weighing up whether I should intervene or not, when Elaine grabbed me by the hand and led me onto the dance floor. I danced, or tried to dance, with Elaine until thankfully, William cut in, leaving me nothing else to do, but head outside to the laundry for a beer.
I thought it would be a wise move before I returned to the laundry and attempted to force more beer into myself, to make a small diversion to find a toilet. I wandered down an empty corridor on the left of the house, barely able to hear the commotion on the dance floor, until I reached two doors that stood side by side, usually a good sign that one was the ‘toot’.
The door on the left opened outwards to reveal a large linen press. The door on the right opened into a small room that seemed to fit the bill, but due to the small amount of moonlight coming in through its lace-covered window, it was hard to tell. I felt around but couldn’t find a cord to pull on or a switch to flick, to make me sure I was in the loo.
Outside the window, I could hear a muffled, but certainly unhappy voice. I peered through the lace curtain to see who was having a gripe. Under the verandah, leaning against one of the swirling pillars, was Clarisse with the sour-faced older lady, standing uncomfortably close to her.
“Clarisse, listen to me, please. Don’t say a word,” the older woman demanded and then placed a finger over Clarisse’s lips.
“You are not going to Spain, or anywhere else. Do you understand? You are staying here and you are doing what I say. And if I hear any more talk about you becoming a nurse or leaving, your next job will be doing tricks for Spokes in his stinkin’ hot tin shed in North Melbourne.”
The older woman took her finger away from Clarisse’s lips, rubbing her shoulders gently, trying to appease her. Clarisse brushed her aside and moved to leave but was stopped abruptly by the older lady who raised her hand as if she was going to strike her.
Suddenly, the light came on in the bathroom. I wheeled around, surprised to see Charlie standing at the door staring suspiciously at me, his hand on a light switch high on the wall.
I wanted to tell Charlie what had just happened, but I remembered that my invitation to this soirée was built on the slimmest thread of coincidence, and any incident could reflect badly on Lettie. I didn’t like the thought of her having to explain why her brother had been found loitering in a dark room.
I turned back quickly to look through the window, just as Clarisse looked up. I caught her gaze for long enough to see a deep embarrassment that I may have heard or seen what transpired.
“What are you up to, Seb?” Charlie inquired more than asked. “Doesn’t matter, I don’t wanna know. Mrs Parmenter is taking anyone that wants to go back into town, back into town. So, if ya wanna lift, ya’d better get on ya bike.”
Charlie then stopped momentarily as he went to leave the bathroom, looking back at me as if he thought that I was perhaps a little peculiar.
Lettie was waiting for me, thankfully alone, on the front verandah. I could tell she was having the best night of her life, so she didn’t need to know what I saw through the bathroom window, no matter what I thought about it. It was just another secret I had to keep.
The guests were leaving en masse as Mrs Parmenter backed a huge Wolseley Straight Eight out of their garage. Lettie, then another girl, who I hadn’t noticed during the evening, shuffled along the padded leather seat, followed by Charlie, then me, all comfortably fitting into the massive compartment that was the backseat of the car. The four of us said a big thank you through the rear window to Mr Parmenter, who was holding the fort until all the guests left. Elaine, then William, slid onto the front bench seat next to Mrs Parmenter.
As we backed out of the driveway, I could see Clarisse walking out through the stained-glass double front doors with the sour-faced woman holding her by the arm, all of their group speaking to Mr Parmenter.
Before we were halfway home, Lettie was fast asleep, her head leaning against the padding near the window. The other girl had fallen asleep as well, her head at an awkward angle against Lettie’s shoulder. Charlie was wide awake, looking straight ahead, not interested in
any more conversation. William and Mrs Parmenter chatted about the upcoming debate at the university.
“I’m worried about the Campeins stacking the audience in the lecture room, Mrs Parmenter, causing a huge imbalance in the fairness of the debate. And I know the Debating Society still haven’t settled on a proposition for the debate, either. The last I heard they were planning to call it ‘The Spanish Government is responsible for the current misery in Spain’,” William informed Elaine’s mum, respectfully waiting for a response.
“Provocative title, William, though I am glad to debate Spain on any terms, in any forum. If the Northern Lecture Room cannot provide a visible degree of fairness, we will ask that the debate be moved to a bigger venue,” Mrs Parmenter replied calmly.
“Are Lettie and you, Sebastian, going to the debate? It should start about eight p.m. We may need the numbers,” Mrs Parmenter joked, keeping her eyes fixed on the road.
“I don’t know, Mrs Parmenter. We weren’t sure if it was open to the public,” I replied, thinking I could be too tired to listen to a heavy debate on a Monday night.
“The public are always welcome to the Debating Society nights. The usual attendance rarely warrants any more than a small lecture theatre, but not on this subject. I’m told there has been a huge amount of interest from outside of the university, as well as within. It would be lovely if Lettie and you could attend,” Mrs Parmenter pressed, making it hard for me to refuse.
“I will ask Lettie tomorrow, but I’m sure we can make it, as long as Lettie doesn’t have to work too late in the kitchen,” I added, knowing we weren’t going to get out of this.
It was probably well after ten, when Mrs Parmenter pulled the Wolseley up close to the gutter in Pelham Street, leaving Lettie and I only the shortest of hops to get across to Aunty May’s. For the last part of our trip, the occupants of the huge cabin were happy to watch the buildings pass by in complete silence, tiredness having finally caught up with all except Mrs Parmenter, who seemed to have a boundless supply of energy.
I walked around the car and gently opened the door next to Lettie, who had begun to wake up. William hopped out of the car as well.
“Well, we got through it,” William whispered to me, softly enough so no-one else could hear him, before helping me lift Lettie out of the car.
Lettie woke up enough to thank Mrs Parmenter and Elaine again for inviting us to their beautiful home and the wonderful soirée, I also thanked them and said we hoped to be able to do something for them in return one day. Mrs Parmenter responded that the only thing she wanted was for us to always be safe.
William helped Lettie jump across the gutter, saying that if we didn’t have anything to do next Saturday, we should visit Elaine, Charlie and himself, and help out at the Aid stand, out the front of Myer in Bourke Street. If we had time, we could go for a coffee, afterwards.
“It’s a date, then,” Lettie called out, suddenly fully awake, as William hopped back into the car. Elaine waved to us through the rear window, before Mrs Parmenter gunned the motor of the Wolseley, which then sped off towards the university.
10
* * *
The Great Debate
On Wednesday evening, the flyscreen door of Aunty May’s kitchen slowly creaked open, a hand holding a piece of paper slid past the frame and then began waving madly about in the air. Was this the good news we’d all been waiting for?
The next thing, Lettie jumped through the door, arms outstretched.
“I got it! I got it!” she yelled with a huge smile on her beaming face.
Aunty May sat still, unsure what this display from Lettie was all about, until suddenly realising that it was one of the biggest moments in Lettie’s life, and everyone else’s that cared for her. Lettie now had something concrete to build a new life on, a permanent job, something as rare as hen’s teeth nowadays.
I ran over to Lettie, giving her a big hug and then Aunty May followed giving her a kiss on the cheek, saying she always had confidence that the job was hers.
I couldn’t recall Aunty May ever saying that, but it didn’t matter — Lettie had the job!
What a few weeks she’d had, we both had, but this was the icing on the cake, a real chance to get ahead down here. Everyone was looking for the same thing at the moment, to get some regular ‘coin’ coming in. It underlined everything.
Aunty May said she would cook up a huge leg of lamb for a special lunch for everyone on Sunday, and even buy a couple of bottles of beer for a real celebration of what she called ‘Lettie’s turn of luck’. She told Lettie and I that we could invite our new university friends over for the lunch, if we liked. But, Lettie said it was unlikely they would come, because Elaine and William were planning a big day on Sunday, in preparation for a university debate the next night, although she would make a point of asking them on Saturday afternoon, when we planned to meet at the Bourke Street Aid for Spain stand.
I was a little reluctant to tell Lettie, after her great news that I wouldn’t be going with her into the city on Saturday. So I decided to leave it until Friday to let her know that I would be going with Lenny to a Carlton practice match on Saturday afternoon, straight after work. I didn’t want to have to explain to her that I just wanted to get away from William, and the troubles surrounding him, for a while. I wanted to go somewhere where I didn’t have to think.
After I told Lettie on Friday night, she just smiled, her head still in the clouds. “You can do whatever you want to, Grubby!”
Lettie did tell me later that night, she had planned to go clothes shopping on Saturday afternoon with Elaine anyway, but first had to sneak Elaine away from the Aid stand for long enough, to help her spend a fair whack of her first pay packet in Myer or Georges.
It was the right move, not to go into the city with Lettie on Saturday, not that I wouldn’t have minded joining everyone for the coffee that William had promised, but I would only have ended up being bored to death, hanging around the Aid stand all afternoon, while William and Charlie went about parting shoppers from some of their ‘hard-earned’.
Another reason I wanted to clear my head at the footy, was that I couldn’t get out of my mind the image of that sour-faced woman, lifting her hand to Clarisse at the soirée last Sunday, and then to see the embarrassment on her face when she looked up at me.
I knew Clarisse was probably a working girl, and the older woman her ‘Madam’, but no-one deserves to be treated like a slave or threatened with violence. I wanted to help her, but where would I begin to start, and would she really want a young bloke, not long out of the bush, riding in like a white knight to rescue her. I doubt it.
In the end, Clarisse was the only one who could solve her problems.
*
On Saturday afternoon, it felt like we were already back in the middle of winter. I was shivering in a cold and lazy wind out the front of the Heatley stand at Princes Park with Lenny, eating a lukewarm meat pie with the tiniest dab of sauce on it, which I was lucky to get from the only concession stand open for the practice match.
The Bluebaggers were giving the hapless Royboys a fair touch-up, and it wasn’t even half-time. But this was great, getting away from any dramas, if only for a short time. This afternoon wasn’t going to get any more serious than wondering why the new coach, Rowe, hadn’t taken Vallence off for a break and given some other poor bugger a chance to kick a bagful of goals at full forward. After all, ‘Soapy’ had already kicked eight.
I was told by Aunty May as soon as I moved permanently into her boarding house, that I had better barrack for Carlton from now on. “You want to fit in, don’t you, Sebastian?”
The roomies were all big fans of the Navy-blue and would have, without doubt, given me no end of stick if I didn’t join them. After the Blues had won the next six games in a row, I gave myself a pat on the back for the great choice I made. Unfortunately, I only got to one of the games.
Lenny was incredible with his statistics on the Carlton players, even the new ones. H
e knew their numbers, how many games they’d played, how many kicks they got each week. His speciality though, was goals, not only how many goals our players kicked, but against whom, and their career total. He also knew every other team’s goal-kickers, as well. Lenny could rattle off figures for hours, if you let him.
My favourite player was full-back Jim Park, number twenty-six, who wasn’t playing today, probably because he wouldn’t have had anything to do. The only game I managed to see him play in was against a very determined Bulldogs outfit, in Round Sixteen the previous season. He kept Morrison down to two majors up until the end of the third quarter but Artie Olliver was playing a loose man in the forward line appearing to kick goals at will. Carlton were only two points in front with a couple of minutes to go, when the ball was kicked long into the Bulldogs’ forward line. Park ran forward of Morrison and then backed back quickly into a flying pack. The umpire had no choice but to give him a free kick for a push in the back, or else the Blues fans would have rioted. He then took his time to kick long for ‘Soapy’ Vallence to goal just before the final bell.
I loved the way ‘Gentleman Jim’ outsmarted the opposition.
*
“Hang on, Lett, hold your horses,” I yelled out as I saw her heading up the back stairs that led to my digs.
Lettie turned around halfway up the stairs and then pointed to a green velvet hat with matching feather, tilted at an angle on her head.
“Look at this, Grub,” Lettie grinned, rocking her head to show it off. “Ya don’t wanna know how much it cost. I got it at Georges.”
“Lett, ya gotta keep a bit for ’ron, ya know. Aunty May’s gonna want her board.”
“Come on, Grub, you’re allowed to splash out once in ya life. It was fun.”
We headed up to the landing and then sat on the edge, with our feet stretched out over the steps, catching the last rays of the afternoon sun.