The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  I remember my uncle Willy leading the horse along the driveway afterwards. He was taking it to the zoo to be killed. I always see the horse with its head going up and down, because he was so angry, my uncle. He had hold of it so tight with the reins from in front, and he wasn’t a tail man. He took it to the zoo to be fed to the lions.

  By now the ties between Kathy and Wilma and their mother Gladys were becoming increasingly tenuous. The situation wasn’t helped when one of Kathy’s two aunties, half-sisters of Gladys, had a birthday party. All the presents had been left on a sideboard while the family went out to celebrate. Gladys broke into the house and stole the presents. By this time, because of her general contrariness, various relatives had begun telling Kathy: ‘You’re going to grow up bad, like your mother.’ Although this verbal abuse of a young, impressionable mind was to go on for years, it had little effect on Kathy at the time.

  I took no notice of it. It didn’t bother me, because I didn’t know what they were talking about. At that stage really I didn’t know for sure who my mother was. Before this I do remember my mum going to gaol for theft, and she came to the Sydney Road house wrapped in a blanket, because she didn’t have any clothes. She was in Pentridge Prison and I remember her telling me you only got a tin of jam a month and a packet of tobacco.

  Nevertheless, photographic evidence suggests the dire prophecies of her relatives may have been having some effect on the young Kathy after all. A shot taken of her and Wilma around this time shows Kathy with a sour, resentful expression, while Wilma is doing her adorable Shirley Temple impression.

  Apart from the widening gap between her and her mother, Kathy had another sorrow to nourish her resentment—Barbara’s deteriorating health.

  She caught polio, and besides that she was born with a slightly withered arm. I can remember her laying in traction, in this big iron contraption that was on the floor. That’s the reason we moved to Beaconsfield Parade—so she could have a sea bath to get her joints going.

  I can remember this contraption where she was strapped in. It was along the floor, and her head was down a bit lower, trying to straighten her out, like you do with straitjackets. I didn’t have much feelings about it because I didn’t know what was happening to her. Why was she in it? Nobody told you about infantile paralysis at the time. It was raging. I knew she was sick.

  Kathy’s memories of Barbara’s death—’I saw her go stiff; it was like she had had a big convulsion’—are not as strong as her recollection of the immediate aftermath, and her attempt to get Wilma to walk into the traffic.

  She wouldn’t do it. I said: ‘Now you can be dead, too.’ To me it was a game. I was curious. Wilma must have known something. She wouldn’t do it. It was nothing against Wilma—I just wanted to see another death to see what it was really like.

  Within weeks of Barbara’s death Kathy and Wilma were travelling alone on the tram across the city from St Kilda to Carlton to visit the grave.

  I used to pull the bell every stop and I got told off something shocking. I didn’t care. When we got to the cemetery I used to pinch Wilma to make her cry to get some money. There were people around that were tending to graves on the weekends, and I’d make her cry, and they’d say: ‘Why are you crying?’ and I’d say: ‘It’s our baby sister.’ If we got two bob we were rapt. We’d go straight over the road to a shop—we’d have the big ice cream and everything. We had a good rort going, her and me. We used to go once a fortnight for a couple of years. I did miss Barbara. But I didn’t really understand, I knew she wasn’t coming back, but that’s all I knew. We took flowers—we might have only picked geraniums or something, but we took them.

  At this stage Kathy was attending St Kilda Park School. Along with thousands of other Australian school children, she found the influence of war creeping into the classroom. She was issued with her own tin helmet, and remembers the air raid shelters just outside the school building—’trenches with flimsy wooden floors’.

  Much more exciting than attending school was the opportunity to see more of the world when running bets for her great-grandmother. Kathleen Shields liked the odd two bob each-way on a horse, and would wrap the money in a piece of paper, and send Kathy off to Gold Street on the tram, where she would give the bets to her ‘Nan’ (Gladys’s mother, Bertha Mason). As a special treat Nan would occasionally take Kathy to the ladies’ lounge, a little snug in the local pub, for a soft drink. The resident SP bookie used to pin bets on a wooden fence down a lane by the side of the pub. On one memorable occasion Kathy was asked to keep nit, or act as the bookie’s ‘cockatoo’. She received a double-header ice cream for her trouble, even though she had no idea what she was supposed to be guarding against.

  This is how cluey I was even then. Sundays I’d go round to the horse trough at the front of the pub, ‘cos the blokes’d either wee in it or vomit in it, and they’d spill their money. I often used to get a couple of pennies or a two bob out of it. Even then I was enterprising. I used to sell geraniums to the Yank servicemen for chewing gum. I’d stand outside the house on Beaconsfield Parade until I’d got the letter box full of chewing gum, all different flavours they had, then I’d go in.

  These outings to Gold Street often involved Kathy staying overnight at her Nan’s house—another opportunity for her to witness first-hand the battleground of marriage. Rowdy Mason, Bertha’s husband, was renowned among neighbours for the frequency and volume of his rages.

  They’d leave the pub, and then there’d be a blue, and I could hear the neighbours saying, ‘The Masons are at it again.’ I always remember on Saturdays my nan used to polish the sideboard and put a bunch of fresh flowers there. Every Sunday morning when I got up it was tipped upside down. He did it in a drunken rage. I used to sleep with two of my aunties—one that got her head cut off later on. I’d be in the middle, and when it was cold they used to pile all the coats on top, that’s what they did in the old days. And the bloody dog, a little Australian terrier named Chooka—named after Chooka Howell, the Carlton champion—was down the foot of the bed.

  It was Aunty Mickey Mason who was virtually decapitated in a road accident when Kathy was twelve. Mickey and her husband were returning along the Hume Highway from New South Wales where they had celebrated their honeymoon with another couple, when their car ran under a truck, killing Mickey, who was in the front, and the male friend in the back. For the third time in her young life Kathy was about to encounter a corpse.

  The coffin was at home—by now we were living in a two-storey house in Parkville—and they had all gone to visit Mickey’s husband in the hospital. He had a split tongue. There she is lying in the bloody coffin again, isn’t she? I was left in the house alone with Wilma.

  We knew Mickey’s head was cut off, we’d overheard them talking about it. She’s got a lace cap on the top of her head, and I said to Wilma: ‘I wonder if she really did . . . ?’ because there again is the mystery. How did they put it back? She was lying there, and the head looked normal. I said: ‘Wilma, if she’s got her head on what happened? How’d they put it back?’ I wanted to pull the lace thing off to see how the head was stuck back on. But Wilma wouldn’t stay, and I didn’t do it.

  She looked so peaceful, but the mystery to me was how they put the bloody head back.

  By now Kathy and Wilma had been separated from Gladys for six years. They had little sense of loss—they knew their great-grandmother, Kathleen Shields, as ‘Mum’, and only rarely saw their real mother. When they did there was always a veil of uncertainty around her identity.

  Kathleen Shields, after whom Kathy was named, was one of the few adults to see she was starved for affection compared with the more outgoing Wilma. So Kathleen always tried to ensure Kathy got her share of kisses and cuddles. She was a stabilising influence for the girls, and her various homes always represented a sanctuary from the destructive rowing and near-poverty of other branches of the family. Gladys was simply becoming ‘this lady’.

  I used to see this lady at the park o
ver the road from Beacons-field Parade, and she always introduced some bloke to me as Uncle. I went to Coles and bought a threepenny rouge, and I gave this present to the lady. Somewhere I must have known something because I cared for her, or I wouldn’t have bought her the rouge.

  Then I used to get beltings off my aunties, because instead of going to the cemetery to visit Barbara, we’d get picked up from somewhere by this lady instead. And the flowers I used to pick for my sister, I’d give to this lady. Nobody ever told me it was my mum. Just the aunties telling me I’d grow up bad like my mum. She was just very friendly, she kept cropping up all the time.

  The contradictory effect of their early lives and their mother’s influence on Kathy and Wilma is most apparent when the pair are together. Wilma is an urbane, well-spoken and immaculately groomed woman in her late fifties, with none of Kathy’s rough edges. There is an obvious bond between them, however, and Wilma has her own theories as to why they have turned out so differently:

  I believe our mother, Gladys, has a lot to do with it. She was a terrible influence, an entirely negative influence. We were brought up by her to perform. She saw us as ornaments. She didn’t want any responsibility for us, just to show us off. Basically my own mother frightened me. I would often refuse to go with her, while Kathy would.

  Having said all that, I don’t think Kathy can blame everything that has happened to her on our mother. Kathy has made her own decisions in life, and these have shaped her destiny.

  Wilma, however, is a staunch supporter of another side of Kathy. ‘She is, deep down, a very Christian woman in a strange sense. She has always helped people she perceives to be weak or in need. There is tremendous good in her.’

  * * *

  By the age of twelve Kathy had more pressing issues than the influence of her mother with which to contend—her first period was looming. Like most young girls in the 1940s, she was totally unprepared for it, reacting with a mixture of shame and fear. She sat on the toilet, convinced someone had made a bizarre attempt to kill her, and that her life’s blood was draining away.

  Even when one of her aunties took pity on her and gave her some primitive form of sanitary pad, she received no instructions on its disposal. So the frightened Kathy began hiding the pads under her mattress, where they were finally discovered by her great-grandmother. But her awakening sexuality was not all blood and tears. When she was thirteen one of her favourite aunties, Lorna, would take her to the weekly dance at Moonee Ponds Town Hall. It was here she first realised the delicious power she could exercise over adolescent boys, and even men. In the end Lorna became disenchanted with continually being left seated while Kathy was invited onto the dance floor.

  I felt a bit shy because all the others were older than me, and I couldn’t dance. Lorna would dress me up really great, and put make-up on me just before we went. So I must have looked young and fresh. I wasn’t supposed to wear anything like that. She even lent me a pair of shoes that made me a bit taller. First time I wore heels I had to stagger around.

  One of Kathy’s first boyfriends was Bobby Sedgman, brother of Frank Sedgman, the famous tennis player. She and Bobby were both fourteen.

  Bobby was a good-looking boy. We’d walk up to the fish shop through the lanes hand in hand. Buy sixpenn’th of chips. And then one day he put a box of chocolates in my letterbox, but it didn’t go any further than that. He was my special boyfriend at school.

  Kathy spent most weekends with a group of local boys who used to ride bicycles to Mount Eliza and back, a round trip of around 100 kilometres. Her main ambition at this time, outside her burgeoning social life, was to be a chemist. Kathleen Shields had moved with the two girls to Darebin, a northern suburb, and Kathy was attending Princes Hill High School in Carlton.

  It was where everybody went that was any good. I was a horrible kid at school, but I loved it. I was very popular. There was this poor French teacher. He was shell-shocked in the war, and I used to love to get him going, ‘cos the veins’d all stick out in his neck, and he’d go purple. He’d say: ‘Kathy Kemp, stand outside in the passage,’ and I’d say: ‘You can’t make me do that.’ And I loved it.

  Kathy had a serious accident during this period, smashing a number of front teeth when she landed on her head after jumping over a wall to retrieve a ball. Partly because of her great-grandmother’s dislike of doctors, she never received proper treatment for her injuries and her mouth became septic and hideously swollen. The pain became so intense she spent her daily one-shilling lunch money on painkillers, and would sit in class sucking on aspirin.

  By the time she was fifteen, a year after she left school and was working in a local clothing factory, Kathy was beginning to enjoy the early stirrings of a healthy sexual appetite. No guilt, and no strings attached. And then, quite suddenly, this freedom was snatched away, almost as unexpectedly as it had begun. Kathy met the first of the three men who, between them, were to father her ten children and shape much of the next sixteen years of her life.

  The first of the three, and the only one still alive today, was Dennis James Ryan, who made his entrance astride a gleaming Triumph motorcycle. Dennis was four years older than Kathy, but more than that, he worked on a farm at outer suburban Reservoir, and the farm had haystacks . . . The 650 cc motorcycle, with Dennis in the saddle, entered Kathy’s life one sunny day in Royal Parade, a broad, tree-lined boulevard close to the centre of Melbourne.

  He was riding past where I was sitting on a wall, and I whistled him, and he came back, and that was it. I think it was the bike that got to me first. He took me for a ride and I loved it. I put my arms around him and that felt good, too. I didn’t have anyone else that I used to be able to cuddle. And I used to nick off to the farm, and sleep in the haystack and whatever . . . I had no sex education whatsoever, but I was a bit cheeky. Dennis was nineteen, but he didn’t know what he was doing, either. He must have been a virgin, too. First time was in the haystack. I didn’t know what had happened. It wasn’t that special. It was just a bit of a bloody nuisance because I was bleeding. Later on it got better—that’s why I was always nicking off to the farm. Later on when we got married, when we were in bed he used to put the blankets over his head and light a candle and have a look, so he didn’t know much.

  Within three or four months of their first meeting Kathy became pregnant. She confided in an older girlfriend, Dolores, that she hadn’t had her period, and her worst fears were confirmed.

  I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. In those days abortion was out. I didn’t know how to tell my family and so me and another friend, Marion, ran away to Sydney. We caught the train. We only had about four shillings between us when we got off. We went to a pub and got a job, on the corner of Castlereagh and Park. I was a waitress and she was a housemaid. The owner wanted me to iron his shirts, and I scorched them all. I put the best one on top, and that’s when we left. I rang my great-grandmother, and I said: ‘Mum, I’m coming home, but you’re not to go crook at me because I’m pregnant.’ She sent me the money to come home.

  Typically, Kathleen Shields hid her anger and disappointment, leaving another member of the family, Kathy’s Uncle Jacky, to confront Dennis. Jacky took Kathy, and a shotgun, to the Reservoir farm. Officials at the Melbourne Royal Women’s Hospital, where the pregnancy had been confirmed, had told the family the matter would be reported to the police, because of Kathy’s age. Dennis knew he was to be charged with carnal knowledge, but despite this—and the shotgun—refused point blank to marry her.

  With my great-grandmother there was no hint of adopting out the baby. She had eight children, and this one was going to be ours. There was no way in our family that you gave up kids. They were family, and there was a big family of us. That was the love she had for me, see. Actually Dennis didn’t want to marry me. I went to church with him at St Mary’s Star of the Sea in West Melbourne. We went for counselling first—’and marriage is for the conception of children’ and all that shit . . .then the first time we were goi
ng to get married he never turned up. I was waiting at the altar. My aunty had dressed me up in a nice light tan coat with a hat and flowers. The wedding was due to take place about seven. There was just me and a couple of aunties. It wasn’t a full church or anything. When he didn’t turn up I didn’t know what to think.

  I didn’t think he was a bastard or anything. I was more disappointed. I think he went up to his parents’ at Sea Lake on the coast to stay and see if the baby was born alive, because then he wouldn’t have had to muck up his life if the baby was born dead. Just nicked off on his bike. Maybe he couldn’t cope. We were both young and had nowhere to live. Well, after that I had baby Dennis on the seventh of November, and to stop the court case on the carnal knowledge charge he married me on the fourteenth of December.

  Kathy’s revenge was precisely what would have been expected from the child she still was. The second time around she lingered in the bath, delaying the ceremony and keeping everyone waiting in the church. ‘I’m thinking about it,’ she told Dennis when he asked her for the tenth time if she was going to get out of the bath. But then, arriving late at the altar has always been a bride’s prerogative, and at least Kathy, unlike Dennis the first time, eventually did put in an appearance.

  And so did Dennis junior. Kathy’s delivery, at sixteen years of age, took place in the Royal Women’s Hospital shortly before midnight on Tuesday, 7 November 1951—Melbourne Cup Day. Dennis shared his birthday with Captain James Cook, Leon Trotsky, Billy Graham and Joni Mitchell. He was to make his mark on the world in a somewhat different way from all of them.

  * * *

  I. During the writing of this book Kathy learnt from Wilma, who visited and photographed their father’s grave in Gaza, that he had committed suicide, not through illness, but because of hate letters he received, almost certainly from Gladys. Wilma had known this for some time, but kept it from Kathy, who was deeply upset by the news.