by Gary Seeary
“How’d the footy go, Grub, Blues win?” Lettie asked, adjusting the angle of her hat again.
“Yeah, they killed ’em, an easy win. How’d the stand go today, make a bit a dosh?”
“Yeah, they had a good day. Clarisse and Charlie were helping William, so that made it easier for me to drag Elaine away to do some shopping.”
“Clarisse was there?” I asked casually, trying not to act surprised.
“Yeah, didn’t ya hear her say last Sunday, she helps out the Aid committee?” Lettie replied. “She hurt herself at the Children’s earlier in the week though, tripped over something in the ward, but she’s all right,” said Lettie without concern.
“Did William end up takin’ ya for the coffee he promised or was he just full of hot air?”
“I think you’re a little jealous of William, Grub. He’s always a gentleman around me.”
Bloody hell, she doesn’t know the half of him.
“After we helped pack up the stand, William took us all down through the Block Arcade to his favourite café, ‘La Rubrique’. We squeezed into a tiny booth near the window like we were in Paris. I was very impressed when William and Charlie spoke French to the owner, ordering coffee and cakes for us. When the coffee arrived, it was in tiny cups with no milk and tasted horrible. I felt like asking for a cup of tea, but I didn’t want to offend William.”
William this, William that. Time to change the subject.
“So, how is Elaine going with her school studies?” I asked. “What’s she studying, anyhow?”
“University, Grub, and she’s doin’ Modern History as her main subject. She says that Charlie has helped her out of trouble a dozen times in the past two years. He’s a good bloke, Charlie. He asked how you’re doin’. That’s nice of him.”
“Yeah, he’s quite a character, isn’t he, more like the blokes ya come across back home? Ya’d never guess he was a history genius.”
“The only grumble for the day was Elaine saying that William was spending far too much time on Monday night’s debate and not studying at all. She says he gets fixed on things and won’t let up until he’s the master of ’em.”
I was just about to say to Lettie that it was time I got out of my work clobber before they walked to the copper on their own, when Aunty May poked her head out from around the corner of the house at the bottom of the stairs.
“Hello. Did you both have a nice day?” Aunty May asked, in a friendlier tone than usual.
“Yeah, I had a …” before I could say ‘good day’, my foreman appeared at the bottom of the stairs as well.
What does that bastard want?
“Hi there. Did your Aunt tell you that we received a letter for you both — from your brother?” he stated as if he was the Post Master-bloody-General.
“Which one?” I snapped, thinking we didn’t need the likes of him delivering our mail.
“Vern, it has on the back,” Aunty May chipped in sheepishly. “It must be from Tiny.”
“Tiny, he’s never written a letter in his life. Not that I can remember,” Lettie said, shrugging her shoulders and then heading down the stairs to take the letter from the foreman.
There was something funny about this — we needed to read the letter on our own.
“Bring it up here, Lett. We’ll read it after tea.”
I could see Lettie was reluctant to bring the letter up, looking disappointed that she couldn’t open it straight away. But, she eventually conceded and came back up with the letter, handing it to me on the landing.
“Thanks for bringing us the letter. Special delivery,” I said, smiling. “Well see ya downstairs for dinner, then.”
I felt the flap of the letter; it was moist. Someone had steamed open the letter.
*
Dinner on Saturday night was a lot quieter than any dinner since Lettie had received the news about her job. Barry had thankfully gone out for the evening, leaving Aunty May, Lettie, a couple of roomies and me to sit in awkward silence during the meal. The only topic to talk about was the weird up and down weather Melbourne was having at the moment.
The highlight of the evening was when Lettie brought out a large bag of lollies she had bought from Myer for everyone to share at the boarding house. Aunty May doled out one lolly each, before pouring the rest into a bowl, putting a tea-towel over the top so they would stay fresh for after lunch tomorrow.
I teed up with Lettie to meet me in my room as soon as she could get away after dinner. Earlier, I had wanted to open the letter myself before I came down from my room, but it wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out that there mightn’t be much good news in it, so it was better that Lettie and I enjoyed a decent meal first.
*
“Come in” I yelled, as soon as I heard the knock on the screen door of my room.
Lettie came in quickly, firmly shutting the door behind her, before sitting down next to me on the bed, both of us leaning against the wall.
“Someone’s opened the letter,” I said bitterly, as soon as she had settled.
“Are ya sure? I know Aunty May’s a sticky-beak, but …”
“I’m positive, Lett. And, what the hell’s that bloody Barry doing getting involved in our business? I hate that bastard!”
“That’s not helping, Grub. Best to read the letter first — could be nothing.”
The flap came open easily. The letter was written in pencil.
“Ya don’t mind if I read it, do ya?”
Lettie nodded her approval, with a look that told me to get on with it.
The letter started off in the standard fashion, Tiny asked how everyone was, and how things were progressing on the jobs front. He wrote that Mum and Dad were in reasonable health, Dad’s arm on the mend, and also that Dad had made a few quid by getting in with a bloke who needed somewhere to fatten up his poor-grade stock of sheep, which he had bought up north for a song. Then, he wrote that Robbie was in the asylum.
“What!’ Lettie cried out, her hands coming up immediately to her face. “Robbie,” she mumbled under her breath.
We sat in silence for nearly a minute before I continued reading, hoping there was something more in it to explain why this had happened.
Tiny wrote that Robbie had become increasingly aggressive with everyone, especially those who tried to take him away from his books, which were far too advanced for his school curriculum. He said everything came to a head, when a female lay-teacher tried to confiscate his favourite mathematics book during religious instruction, forcing him to read from the Bible. Tiny wrote that in the report they received from the principal he had his hand on the Bible as he blasphemed, before ripping out several pages and throwing the scrunched up paper at the shocked teacher.
When the teacher tried to stop him from ripping more pages, he slapped her on the face — hard.
Tiny thought the school board’s decision to suspend Robbie was made hastily to appease a hysterical woman, who everyone in the area knew was fanatical about her preaching. When the woman made a complaint of assault to the police, they had nothing else to do but come out to the farm and ask Robbie some questions. The police were sympathetic at the start until Robbie started to scream at them, yelling that he wanted to go to his room to study. The police told the family they had only one choice to make, or he was going to be charged, so Mum and Dad voluntarily committed him. Tiny wrote that he told the folks he didn’t agree with their decision, believing Robbie could be cared for better at home than in an asylum, where the screams of patients could be heard from outside the walls. He said it would probably mean a lot of work, but that’s what families do.
Tiny requested, if at all possible, for Lettie and me to come home to try and convince Mum and Dad to fight for Robbie.
“Mum and Dad did the right thing,” I blurted out.
“Shut up, Grub!” Lettie shouted back, before running out of my room and then down the stairs.
*
I woke up early in the morning unable to sleep. I had hu
rt Lettie, and I knew it. I just didn’t think how badly the news about Robbie would affect her. This was a disaster for our family, an absolute bloody disaster!
I sat in the kitchen on my own with a cup of tea in front of me, the sun not even up. I read the letter over and over again, trying to figure out why I so readily agreed with Mum and Dad’s decision, and not considered Tiny’s point of view.
According to Lettie, the last time she was home, Mum and Dad were already struggling to cope with Robbie, and it would only get worse as they got older, especially, if he needed extra care for the rest of his life. Tiny thought that if we all rallied around to help, Robbie’s problems would disappear, but they wouldn’t. At least one of us would end up resenting him. Lettie would never complain but it would be her that would be giving up the most, just as everything good was starting to happen for her.
In the back of my mind I knew there was something wrong with the way I was thinking. Then I suddenly realised I hadn’t seriously thought about Robbie, for a very long time. Didn’t I care about my brother, anymore?
“Mornin’, Grub. You’re up early,” Lettie whispered, her eyes red and watery as she appeared out of the corridor that led to her room. “I couldn’t sleep, either,” before pulling up a chair next to mine. “Any tea left in the pot?”
I nodded, thinking that I couldn’t treat my brother like he didn’t have a chance at life, like the rest of us.
“I’m sorry, Lett. I was being selfish … Sorry.”
Lettie leant her head against my shoulder. “That’s all right, Grub. We’ll work it out.”
“We’ll find a way to look after Robbie,” I assured her.
Lettie poured herself a cup of tea and then sat back quietly.
“We could both go back home at Easter, Lett. It doesn’t give us much time, but we could do it,” I said half-heartedly, knowing we only had five days.
“I need to go back to bed, Grub. I’ll think about it. You can have my tea if ya want.”
I sat in the kitchen drinking Lettie’s tea, a million things running through my mind until the room got too bright and I couldn’t stay up any longer.
*
I felt better about things when I woke up on Sunday morning for the second time. I lay in bed wondering why I thought five days wouldn’t be long enough to organise two train tickets and pack a bag. We were actually lucky that Easter was just in front of us. It would give us four days off in a row that we wouldn’t normally have and would find hard to get, even if I asked the foreman nicely.
Money was the problem. After board, Lettie wouldn’t have much left of her first pay, after spending pretty well all of it on a green hat, and it would be very unlikely, if not impossible, to get any board money back from Aunty May especially after she had lashed out on lunch today.
I worked out with the bit of loose change I had in my bedside drawer and with our week’s pay on Thursday thrown in, we probably had enough on our own to get home and then return to the city. Finding board for the week after had me worried.
I stretched out in bed, enjoying the rare opportunity for a lie-in, and concluded it must have been the foreman who had steamed open our letter; it had been written all over his face. I could imagine how Aunty May would have been on Saturday afternoon, all in a flap when the mail arrived and there being a letter from Tiny in the bundle. She would have been desperate to find out what was inside, seeing that he’d never written before, so something serious had to be up.
Barry would have acted like a hero, saying, “I’ll get it open for you, May. They won’t even know.” Or was I thinking the worst of him?
*
Aunty May’s special lunch turned out to be a lot of fun. All the roomies, including the foreman, banded together to wish Lettie the best of luck in her new position, singing ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’ and then giving her a toast. They were blissfully unaware that all the cheers might be in vain if events back home de-railed her ‘turn of luck’.
Lettie was in a positive mood, like me, perhaps thinking that even though we were going home to make a difficult decision about Robbie, at least we were going home. It had been nearly seven months since I’d seen the rest of my family. I felt the timing was right.
I worked out with Lettie that if I wrote a letter tonight, it should arrive home before Friday, letting the folks know that we’d be arriving at the Stawell Railway Station, sometime late Friday afternoon. There was even a little excitement creeping into the way we were planning this trip. I would go down to Spencer Street Station after work on Tuesday, buy two one-way tickets and then when we returned on Friday, purchase the return tickets. Not exactly a cinch, but it should work.
Later in the afternoon, we told Aunty May about the disturbing news in the letter. She seemed genuinely surprised and concerned about what had happened to Robbie, asking us to pass on her best wishes to the family and wishing she could come back with us, but that wouldn’t be possible, she had far too much to do in the boarding house. We didn’t bother asking if we could hold back our next week’s board for a few days.
Aunty May reminded us that jobs like Lettie’s didn’t come along every day, and she should think very carefully about giving it up, on the off-chance that one day Robbie would be like we remembered him when he was young.
Lettie and I both agreed that we really could do without going to the university debate tomorrow night, as we both had plenty of sleep to catch up on. But, there was never really any doubt we wouldn’t go, knowing how much effort Elaine and William had put into organising support for Mrs Parmenter’s debating team. We couldn’t disappoint them by not turning up.
*
Instead of meeting outside the King’s College, Lettie and I planned to meet at a small lane just down from the main entrance at Tin Alley, which would take us into the centre of the Melbourne University campus.
It wasn’t that deadly hot a day, but with the air almost wet with humidity, working in my stuffy factory turned out to be a real struggle. The little energy I had left was slowly draining away, as I walked at a snail’s pace up Swanston Street, past the Women’s Hospital, gradually closing in on our arranged meeting place in the distance.
I wasn’t alone in my travels in the fading afternoon sun, a steady stream of men and women from all walks of life, many still in their work clothes, others dressed for an occasion, were heading in the same direction as me. Perhaps, some of these fine folk were attending tonight’s Spanish debate.
A good distance ahead, a large group of students dressed in navy blue jackets with red insignia, turned as one into the campus at Tin Alley. I couldn’t believe these poor buggers were being made to trudge around in heavy ‘bags of fruit’, on such a humid day. When the last of the group disappeared into the main entrance, I could see Lettie bringing up the rear, not in her work uniform, but in a light green summer dress.
“Hi, Lett. How’d ya go in the heat today?” I asked as we caught up, before moving off the footpath to let through the mass of people turning into the lane that led into the centre of the campus.
“It was shocking, Grub. Some of the girls were near exhaustion and would have had to go home if Madeline hadn’t let them take lots of short breaks outside. She’s not going tonight, but she let me freshen up at her house. I would feel terrible if I had to leave her, Grub,” Lettie said quietly, looking washed out.
I allowed Lettie’s comment to slip by, determined not to mention the difficult decision we had to go home and make at the end of the week. It would serve no purpose to go over and over the same arguments; there would be plenty of time for talk at Easter.
Lettie and I made our way towards the centre of the campus, surrounded by a growing throng of people who filed slowly past faculty buildings, now shaded by a mass of dark green foliage. The Debating Society may be getting a much better turnout tonight than they could have ever wished for.
A short distance ahead, the path split into two. Lettie told me to take the left and stay close to her, warning that th
e campus turned into somewhat of a maze through to the Northern Lecture Theatre.
The next second loud voices boomed out from behind.
“Make Way! Make Way! You hear me. Make way!”
Lettie and I tried to move off the path, but couldn’t, the people in front of us had stopped too suddenly, turning to look in the direction of the sound. Leaving Lettie and I stuck, smack dab in the middle of the path.
Three policemen in white bobby hats, heavy black uniforms, their batons raised, ran past me on the left, three policemen shot past Lettie, on the right.
Lettie let out a startled, “Oh, God!” as they continued at the same steady pace between two buildings, before disappearing through an arched opening into a vaulted corridor at the near end of a large stone building.
“Do ya think there goin’ to the debate?” Lettie asked, slightly shaken. “They couldn’t be, could they?”
“Dunno, Lett, I wouldn’t have thought so,” I replied, uneasy at the sight of these policemen.
Lettie and I passed through the same arch the policemen had only minutes earlier, and then strolled along the vaulted corridor with the low sun flickering through pillars on our left, casting long shadows across the path ahead. Our eyes were drawn to an incredible red, ribbed ceiling above, momentarily making me think I could be in another place in time. Beyond the pillars was a quadrangle, which Lettie said was the same one that held the ‘Peace’ meeting, almost a fortnight ago. Several camellias across the courtyard were starting to bloom pink and white.
“That’s where Margaret and Danielle were standing at the ‘Peace Group’ meeting, holding up the ‘World Peace’ banner,” Lettie said, pointing to the open far end of the quadrangle.
A group was currently in that same spot, appearing from a distance, to consist of at least fifty young men and women praying in front of a man whose appearance was hidden under a white-hooded robe. The curved wooden staff he was holding gave him the allure of a minister or a priest, more-so as many of his followers were on their knees in prayer.
“How were the students during tea tonight, Lett?” I asked. “Did any of ’em have words?”