We would go out quite often. My father’s mode of transportation was great fun, but rather hair-raising. He owned an old three-wheel motorbike with a big passenger compartment (a sort of large boxlike container) attached to the back in which all the family used to sit. Melbourne has a tram system and when we crossed the tram tracks, I sat in the back watching out for the trams, terrified that one would come along and knock us over. I was about eight at the time, David about six, and Leslie two, and I was always on guard for the family. Dad was a very skillful driver so although I was scared, I knew that nothing was going to happen to us.
Mom, Dad, David, and myself often went to the ice-skating rink in Melbourne. We had great fun whizzing around and occasionally falling over. David and I also loved going to the Saturday movie matinee. My parents would give us some pocket money to buy tickets and an ice cream, and I would take my little brother by the hand and we would trot off very happily to the movie theater every Saturday afternoon to see wonderful films such as Francis the Talking Mule and Lassie Come Home.
It was at about this time that David began going to school. In many ways, he was something of a late starter. He didn’t actually begin talking until he was about three years old. He also had a lot of trouble controlling his bowels when he started school, at the age of five. He often hid in the grass after class near our school (Elwood State School, which was a few minutes’ walk from Glenhuntly Road where we lived). I would leave school with my friends, and one of them would say, “Look, there’s your little brother hiding in the grass.” I would go over and fetch David, who had dirtied himself, and take him home where my mother would put him in a bath to clean him. David did this frequently, almost every day. To me, this kind of behavior illustrates what a sensitive and anxious child he was.
David messing himself was just a fact of life, something we got used to. My father never whipped David for this with a wet towel as happens in Shine. He never hit David, nor would it have been in his nature to do so.
I also recall that David didn’t much want to go to school: he cried frequently, not wishing to be separated from his parents. I remember, too, that as a young child he was also scared of lighting the gas kettle. Even when he was older, David was not very practical. For example, as a teenager he couldn’t tie his own shoelaces. Perhaps this was a foretaste of later life when David went to London and it soon became apparent that it wasn’t good for him to be away from a loving, nurturing environment, without anyone to take care of him. In London he had difficulty looking after himself, managing his finances and surviving on his own. His reluctance to leave the family nest as a child was in marked contrast to myself; I didn’t have any problems about going to school. On the contrary, I have always been curious and eager to try out new things, in contrast to David at that time.
David had to wear eyeglasses from a very early age. I think he must have been five, perhaps even four and a half. He was, and is, extremely shortsighted, the only child in our family who began to wear glasses so young. His glasses are the kind known in Australia as Coke bottle lenses because they are so thick. Nowadays David sometimes wears contact lenses, although he finds that they cause irritation. He may have been encouraged by others to wear them for his concert performances, even though he is not very comfortable with them.
Like my younger brother Leslie, who could be a bit of an adventurer and get into all sorts of mischief, I, too, was quite a naughty child. David was more serious, spending much of his time from an early age sitting at the piano, lost in music. I remember I owned a skirt that I absolutely hated and my mother would try and make me wear it. Early one evening I snuck out of the apartment and went down to the canal near our home in Glenhuntly Road and threw the skirt into the water and that was the end of that. That canal was perfect for throwing unwanted items into.
Another thing I remember is the circus that came to town every year. It pitched its tent on the big field just across from where we lived, bringing its horses and lions and tigers and elephants. I used to hang around day and night, intoxicated by the exotic atmosphere and nomadic feeling. David loved visiting the circus, too, and liked watching the firework displays that sometimes took place across the road from us, for example on Guy Fawkes night (an annual British tradition that used to also be celebrated in Australia).
I also had some rather macabre interests, and these got me into trouble. As a young child I was fascinated by matches and fire. When we stoked up the boiler I often used to throw an empty container of toothpaste into the fire, causing some chemical process whereby wonderful colors would be emitted from the old toothpaste container as it burned.
One day when I was about six or seven, I was in the kitchen standing near the very flimsy muslin curtains above the kitchen window. I was lighting one match after another seeing how fast they could burn down until they got to my fingers and then I would blow them out. Then disaster struck. I had stood too close to the curtains and suddenly they were engulfed in flames. I was alone in the kitchen and didn’t know what to do. So I rushed to fill an empty milk bottle full of water and, like an idiot, threw it at the window—not realizing of course that the bottle would completely shatter the window. So not only was there now a fire burning out of control but there was also broken glass all over the floor.
Just at that moment, my little brother David came in and looked at the huge fire blazing and me standing there in a state of near paralysis not knowing what to do. Shocked, he screamed “What have you done! I’m going to go and tell on you.” I was really afraid I was going to get into trouble and I pleaded with him not to. I had this vision that the fire could be put out without anybody knowing, even though in the meantime the wooden window frame had started burning and I didn’t know what to do. But David ran off in a panic to tell my mother. Just then I noticed my father’s old gray shaving mug. I grabbed it and began rushing back and forth from the tap, repeatedly filling it up and throwing water on the fire until eventually I managed to put it out.
Now, although I was quite proud of myself for putting out the fire, the kitchen still looked an absolute shambles. The curtains had been reduced to a smoldering burned rag, the window frame had turned completely black, and there were hundreds of bits of broken glass from the window scattered all over the floor amidst puddles of water. At that moment my mother and David walked in, my mother looking horrified. Dad was due home from work shortly and I was scared that I would be punished for all the damage I’d caused. So I hid in the bathroom. My mother of course told my father what had happened. Dad came to the door of the bathroom and said: “Come on, Margaret, come on outside.” And I said: “No, no, no. I know I’ve done an awful thing. I don’t want to be punished.” It took my father quite a long time while I stayed barricaded in the bathroom to persuade me that nothing was going to happen to me.
Eventually I agreed to come out, and just as Dad had promised, I didn’t get punished at all. He simply explained to me why it was dangerous to play with matches, and that was the end of it.
There was another incident a few months later where I again did something terribly stupid that could have ended in disaster. One of the things I used to be very curious about was the idea of hanging. I’d heard and read about people getting hanged for crimes, so I thought I would try to see what this hanging experience felt like. I suggested to David that we should try it out. Being my obedient little brother he did what his big sister told him. We went to the back of the apartments with a rope (our apartment was part of a small two-story block of four apartments, with stairs between the floors) and I told David to go up to the top of the landing while I stood at the bottom of the stairs. He then threw one end of the rope down to me as I instructed and I made a noose and put it around my neck. I then ordered him to start pulling. At first it was fine, but gradually I could feel the rope tightening around my neck and it stopped feeling fine. Luckily, just as I started gasping for air, one of the neighbors came out, saw us, and raced inside frantically shouting, “Mrs. Helfgott, Mrs. Helfgott
, come quickly!” My mother rushed out, took the rope away from David, and I was saved.
4
THE MOVE TO PERTH
In 1953, when I was eight and David was six, my parents decided the family should move to Perth, which is on the west coast of Australia, facing the Indian Ocean and more than 2,000 miles by road from Melbourne. I once asked my father why, rather than move to say Sydney or Canberra, he chose to go to Perth, which is after all one of the most isolated cities in the world. (The nearest city, Adelaide, is over 1,700 miles away.) He told me that he’d taken out a map of Australia and picked the farthest place he could from Melbourne. Its distance was precisely the reason for the move. He wanted to make a totally fresh start.
When my father first came to Australia he had been reasonably successful. But over the years he suffered a string of business failures and things hadn’t always gone well for him. (In 1942-43, he had served in the Australian armed forces.) He also worked in a knitwear factory, keeping the mechanical and electrical tools in order. But as well as disappointments with work, he had become disillusioned with several of his friends in Melbourne, which was particularly painful for him.
By nature, my father was a giver. He had a big personality with a big heart and would do anything for his friends. Yet several of the people he thought he could rely on had let him down badly. In the early days in Melbourne, he used to give shelter to newly arrived migrants from Poland—many of them refugees from anti-Semitic persecution—in his house in Pigdon Street. In most cases they had no money, and my father would feed, clothe, and look after them without taking a penny. He would find them jobs, and help them get established.
But many of the people whom my father had befriended and helped failed to stand by him when he experienced tough times. This was the case even though some of them had become very wealthy. When my father had been in a position to help people, he had done so unstintingly; yet when he himself needed assistance, very little was forthcoming. I remember Dad telling me that people he had helped in the past, and who had since made a lot of money, had done everything they could to avoid him in his time of need. Even though he had four young children (Louise wasn’t born yet), had lost his business, and was in financial difficulty, these people, when they saw my father coming down the street, would actually cross to the other side: they didn’t want to have to place themselves in a situation where they might feel obliged to offer him help. My father was absolutely stunned by this behavior. When he used to tell me about these incidents I could see how hurt he was. My heart went out to him and I realized even then, at an early age, that people weren’t always nice and didn’t always do the right and decent thing.
There were of course two or three notable exceptions, with whom the family are still in touch. I recently spoke to Ida Zoltak, an elderly lady who still lives in Melbourne and whose husband David Zoltak had boarded with my father when he arrived from Czestochowa in 1937. She made a point of telling me that she had seen Shine and thought the way Peter was characterized was “a disgrace.” “The real Peter Helfgott,” she said, “was a very nice, gentle, and lovable man. I can only say nice things about him because there was nothing bad about him.” Another person who became a lifelong friend after my father had put him up when he arrived from Poland in 1938 was Laizar Shaw. Laizar came to visit me in Israel a few years ago and also told me what a truly wonderful man my father was.
However, most of my father’s so-called friends somehow disappeared when he needed them. This was one of the reasons why he wanted to make a fresh start in Perth, although the main factors were harsh economic conditions and his difficulty in finding suitable employment.
Before we sailed for Perth, Dad wanted to give David and me a special treat to put us in a good mood and prepare us for the trip. In June 1953, when Elizabeth II was crowned queen, all the kids in Melbourne were given a day off school to mark the event. Australia at that time was a very loyal member of the British Commonwealth. First Dad took us to lunch at a big department store in Melbourne called Myers and spoiled us with special kinds of candy and ice cream. Then we went to an amusement park called Luna Park. Its entrance was constructed so as to resemble an enormous clown’s face and one had to walk through his giant wide-open mouth to get in. We had a great time there eating cotton candy and having a go on all kinds of rides; it was my first experience of the big dipper, which hurtled up and down at terrific speed and was so absolutely terrifying that I’ll never forget it.
We made the 2,200 mile trip to Perth, which is the capital of Western Australia, by sea. Our journey took us first through Bass Strait (which separates the state of Victoria from the island of Tasmania) and then we sailed across the Great Australian Bight on the southern side of the continent. The boat took six days at that time, with no stops. All of us were utterly seasick, except for my father. We just wanted to stay in our cabin bed but Dad insisted that we go up on deck and breathe in the fresh air. After a couple of days of his urging, David and I finally emerged from our queasy slumber and went up on deck. The salty fresh air made us feel better in no time, and in the end the trip turned out to be quite fun. We ran around playing games all over the boat. However, the journey was an ordeal for my mother and father, since at the time Suzie was just a six-month-old baby and Leslie was only two and a half.
When we finally arrived in Perth, not only did we not have anywhere to stay, but we had almost no money. Being broke, we first moved into an old factory warehouse full of gleaming white refrigerators. The scene was really quite surreal. We all slept on one big double mattress surrounded by fridges, and we cooked on a radiator turned on its side. We lived there for about three weeks until we finally managed to find somewhere to rent.
During this time, although we had no house, no furniture, nothing at all apart from food to eat, my father did something which, on the face of it, might seem very peculiar. He decided to go out and buy the family a piano. He did this on credit. It was a wonderful old second-hand Ronish piano, on which we all learned to play. My brother Leslie in Perth still owns it, indeed his young daughter Dorothy is learning to play on it. She’s very talented musically, and is continuing the family tradition.
My father had notified the Perth Jewish community that we were moving to the town; the old system of Jewish communal support was still very strong and members were happy to help a new Jewish family settle in. The Perth community, though small—at the time it numbered about 3,000—was nevertheless a well-established, vigorous, and affluent one. (It has now grown to around 6,000, following an influx of Jews from South Africa, Britain, and elsewhere.) When some community members came to visit us in the warehouse and saw that my father had purchased a piano, they were absolutely astounded. “How can you go out and buy a piano when you don’t even have a place to live for your children?” they asked. I remember clearly that my father just looked them straight in the eye and said, “But you can’t live without a piano, you can’t live without music.”
That’s what my father was like. His passion for music and the vision he had of teaching us the piano was fulfilled not only in David, but also to a lesser degree in myself and my other siblings. That we all absorbed such a great love of music was due to my father.
But although music for him was as essential as bread and water, he was not obsessive nor did he lack a sense of proportion about what was important. What he had was a spiritual side, a dream of enriching our lives, which paid as much attention to cultural values as to material comfort. Buying us a piano when he did was not a case of his being in any way neglectful. We had plenty to eat during that period, as we did at other times. In fact, my father was not only a great believer in making us take sufficient physical exercise, he was also a stickler for ensuring that we always had the correct nutrition. He constantly made a point of giving us the right quantities of protein, fruit, vegetables, meat, and salads.
After moving out of the refrigerator warehouse, we lived in a number of houses in and around a working-class neighborhood in th
e northern part of Perth, called Highgate. Highgate, which was populated by many new immigrants, mainly from Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia, was next to a much wealthier area called Mt. Lawley, where many of the better off, well-established Jews lived. (Like Carlton in Melbourne, Highgate has in recent years become extremely chic, full of new bars and boutiques.)
We first stayed for a few weeks at a boardinghouse in Lake Street, and then for the next two years we rented a house in Beaufort Street. While we lived at the back of the house, my father decided to turn the front part, which was formerly a shop, into a European-style tearoom. We ran up pink curtains, decorated the tables, and made everything look as attractive as possible; but the venture wasn’t very successful and after two or three months we had to abandon it. My father then went to work as an electrical fitter for the State Electricity Commission.
We were really quite poor. When we needed to economize further, we moved to a house we rented from the state housing commission in an area called Maniana. The house was cheaply constructed, made primarily of asbestos. Later we lived in a dilapidated house in another part of Beaufort Street, which is now a veterinary clinic. There were a lot of problems with the sewage there, and my father spent a great deal of time trying to fix it. The landlord just neglected the problem.
When we first lived in Perth we didn’t have a fridge, which is rather ironic after being surrounded by them at the warehouse. To keep everything fresh, we had to buy an ice chest. In those days an ice delivery man would come down the street every few days, and the families in the neighborhood would buy a block of ice and put it in their chest along with perishables. Eventually my father had saved enough to buy a fridge.
Growing up in Perth, with its white sandy beaches and long summer days, was very different from growing up in Melbourne. They were two different worlds. Perth seemed much more informal to me. Maybe it was the more Mediterranean-like climate and the big open spaces that made life there seem to go at such a relaxed pace. Melbourne’s weather is much cooler and more rainy, and above all changeable. Its inhabitants say of it that there can be four seasons in a single day. Perth had not only the beaches but the wide, tranquil Swan River, which cuts through the center of the city and is often dotted with yachts and sailing boats.
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