Mother of Ten

by J. B. Rowley

  This was the day I had dreaded, had convinced myself would never really come. At some point in the afternoon I had climbed into the big old apple tree next to the dunny. I climbed as high as I could so that no one would find me.

  The truck was ready to go, its motor running. I heard them calling me but I did not respond. After a while they stopped calling. The motor revved loudly. Maxie yelled to me with an urgent tone in his voice. Despite my brothers’ consistent tormenting of me they were always quick to protect me when they thought it was necessary. In some quirky way our constant squabbling probably strengthened our sibling bonds. Now, Maxie was afraid that I would be left on my own. It wasn’t until the truck started to move that the same fear engulfed me. I shinned down the tree as fast as I could and ran toward the truck.

  “She’s coming, Dad,” Maxie called. The truck slowed and came to a halt as I scrambled into the back with the other kids.

  “She’s here, Dad,” called Maxie, relief evident in his voice. The others joined in so that a chorus of voices announced my arrival.

  The truck moved forward once more. I was still sullen and defiant but I felt that I had at least made a stand. Of course, it was like water off a duck’s back to my parents who were by now quite experienced in the ways of children. They knew exactly how to handle me. As far as they were concerned it was just another one of my sulks.

  However, perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps in my childhood innocence some intuition told me that the move from the Bonang cottage did, in fact, mark the end of the happiest years in the life of our family.

  Chapter 11

  Sixty-nine-year old Olive welcomed us into her three bedroom weatherboard home in Salisbury Street with open arms. She didn’t seem to mind that there were now six children and three adults in the house she and Pop had quietly enjoyed for years. The house trembled under the onslaught of running feet and reverberated with the sounds of children laughing, shouting and crying. That the house was on a big double block was a blessing because it meant, as my mother put it, ‘the kids had room to run wild’.

  Rose bushes graced the front yard of Nan’s place. In one corner stood a loquat tree whose dense canopy and abundant succulent yellow fruit attested to its age and fertility. A cement path led visitors from the gate to the front door via large semi-circular stone steps, caressed on both sides by the pink and blue blooms of rotund hydrangea bushes. These bushes were perfect places for us kids to hide whenever we ‘ran away from home’. The front veranda was where Nan and Pop had often sat together on warm evenings to watch ‘the passing parade’ and wave at old Bernie Johnson across the road pottering around in his vegetable garden.

  My brothers quickly discovered that it was possible to run from one end of Nan’s house to the other along the wide hallway. They delighted in the opportunity to charge through the back door, straight along the hall, out through the front door using the hall rug as a slide for the last section, then around the side path to appear at the back door again for a repeat performance, always competing to see who could do it in the fastest time. On one occasion, the neighbour’s pony, either inspired by the boys or frightened by something, actually galloped through the back door and along the hall out to the front veranda.

  The back part of the house consisted of a wash house, with a copper heated on wash days by a wood fire beneath it. The outside back door separated this laundry section from the kitchen; the hub of the house from which tantalizing aromas beckoned us and where freshly baked scones, cakes and pies often covered the table.

  Like her mahogany dining table, Nan’s wood cupboard was a source of enchantment for us. It was next to the stove in the kitchen and could be accessed from inside as well as outside. We could enter the cupboard through the door on the kitchen side, clamber over the pile of wood then depart, like elves, through the small door which was used for placing the wood into the cupboard from the outside. The seductive charm of Nan’s house and Nan herself eventually stopped me brooding over the loss of our Bonang home even though I missed the bush: its earthy smell, the silence of isolation, the wide open spaces and especially the songs of the birds.

  Dad rose early on the first morning in our new home to take the truck out to the bush to collect a load of firewood. Instead of the heavy work of cutting sleepers he had become a ‘wood merchant’ or so it said on the driver’s side door of our old green Commer truck. He planned to keep a stack of sawn logs in the back yard ready for delivery. The boys were going with him, eagerly dragging themselves from their beds despite their hard work of the day before.

  Mum and Nan were in the kitchen early, stoking the fire in the wood stove and getting the kettle on the boil.

  “You look after the little ones, Myrtle,” Nan said with a smile, “And I’ll look after the grown-ups.”

  Mum prepared five bowls of Weet-bix; one for each of my brothers and one for me. Irene was still asleep in her cot and would be fed later.

  “We don’t have any red coals for toasting bread, I’m afraid,” Nan said when my father entered the kitchen. “I’ve not long lit the fire.”

  “Never mind,” said Dad. He strode to the bench and began slicing a loaf of bread with the large carving knife. “Just cook it on the top of the stove. That’ll do me.”

  He handed two thick slices of the white bread to Nan who placed them on the blackened cast iron hot plate of the stove. On another hot plate, a frypan sizzled with lamb chops, sausages and eggs. Nan shuffled the food around in the frypan with an egg lifter and, with the fingers of her free hand, she turned the bread over from time to time.

  “Stop that, you two.” Bobby attempted an air of authority in his tone as he chastised the twins who were fighting over the jug of milk. This was the milk from Nan’s pet cow.

  “Mum, the babies are slopping milk all over Nan’s table,” he added.

  Dad sat down at the head of the table. Mum placed a cup of tea in front of him. A plate of fried food that Nan had transferred from the pan followed.

  Georgie released his grasp on the milk jug and turned to glare at Bobby.

  “We’re not babies,” he said firmly. “We’re big now. We’re seven.”

  Nan placed Dad’s two slices of toast on his plate. Kevin had also lost interest in the milk jug and joined his twin in his protest.

  “Mu...um. Tell Bobby to stop calling us babies.”

  “Yeah,” said Georgie. “Tell him, Mum. Irene’s the baby.”

  The twins had been called ‘the babies’ since the day they were born. Bobby, now aware of his father’s presence, refrained from arguing further but hissed at them under his breath. “Babies!”

  Mum was mindful of Nan, afraid the noise would irritate her.

  “That’ll be enough from you lot,” she said.

  She looked across at Dad. His head was bent over the plate as he used his teeth to expertly skin the last of the cooked meat from a chop bone.

  “Dad,” she said.

  He raised his eyes to look at her and nodded. They always seemed to understand each other’s glances. He placed the bone back on his plate and picked up the second piece of toast.

  “Right, you boys,” he said, “Off you go and wait in the truck.”

  Immediately, their argument was forgotten. All four of them pushed their chairs back from the table and headed for the door, each jostling to be first to race out to the back yard and climb into the truck. Dad laughed as he watched them disappear. He finished his toast, gulped down the last of his tea and stood up. Mum handed him a thermos of tea and the lunch box she had prepared earlier containing sandwiches and apples.

  “Wait a minute, Myrtle,” said Nan reaching for a large cake tin in the cupboard. “Pop these scones in. I made them yesterday.”

  She wrapped half a dozen brown topped scones in a clean tea towel and handed them to Mum.

  “Thanks, Mum.” My mother placed the scones into the box before releasing it to Dad’s grasp.

  “Well, I’m off for another day of hard yakka,” sa
id my father with a grin.

  He tucked the box under his arm and hurried out the door. I heard the truck engine spluttering into life. Then the rumbling of the truck along the back driveway announced the departure of my father and brothers. The house seemed strangely quiet.

  “What about you, Myrtle?” asked Nan, frypan in one hand and egglifter in the other. “What will you have for breakfast?”

  My mother laughed. “You sit down and have your own breakfast, Mum. I can look after myself.”

  “Not on your first day in your new home,” said Nan as she placed the frypan back on top of the stove. “You sit down and I’ll cook you something.”

  Mum laughed and sat down.

  “Careful,” she said to Nan, “I could get used to this.”

  Nan smiled and picked up two pink sausages from the pile on a tray on the bench.

  “Sausages?” she said displaying the conjoined casings of ground meat.

  “Thanks, Mum. One will do. I usually just have tea and toast with Vegemite.”

  Because it was expensive, my mother always gave first priority for meat to Dad and us. The accepted wisdom of the time was that men needed meat because of the hard work they did and children needed it because they were growing.

  At breakfast time it was usually only Dad who had meat. The rest of us had just the one cooked meal on most days although Mum would often include cold meat or leftovers in the sandwiches she made for our lunch.

  “Well, today you’re having an egg as well,” said Nan. “It’ll do us both good: sausages and eggs.”

  So that was how Nan welcomed Mum to her new home. My mother’s years of living in the bush were over but not her years of living with ghosts.

  Chapter 12

  Sleeping quarters in our new house were only slightly less cramped than in the Bonang house. I shared my grandmother’s bedroom although I did not think of it as a room I shared. It was my grandmother’s room and I laid no claim to it in any way other than the place where I slept. My four brothers slept in the small room across the hall from the front parlour which was now a bedroom for my parents and Irene, whose cot nestled in a corner.

  At first, the boys seemed to be constantly running through the house. Scolding them barely diminished their enthusiasm for this activity. In the end, Mum gave them permission to play in the vacant lot next door. They grasped this new adventure with gusto, playing Cowboys and Indians, stalking each other in the tall grass amid yells and whoops that could probably be heard for miles around.

  My mother seemed to welcome our boisterousness. I think she viewed it as evidence her kids were happy and healthy. However, she was fearful that our wild behaviour and noisy exuberance, fully developed from years of living in the open spaces of the bush, would not be appreciated by Nan’s neighbours. Nan dismissed Mum’s worries with a wave of her hand.

  “They’re just doing what children should do,” she said. “The neighbours’ll get used to them.”

  My mother laughed.

  “What about you, Mum?” she asked. “Will you get used to them?”

  “The kids make me feel young,” Nan said. “It’s good to have young ones around the house.”

  Nan went back to puffing contentedly on her pipe. It had been Pop’s pipe. She had taken it over after his death even though she had not previously been a smoker. Nan’s impish grin answered Mum’s bemused expression the first time she saw her mother-in-law smoking Pop’s pipe.

  “Kinda keeps him with me,” Nan said.

  The feel of his pipe, the intimacy of it and of course the familiar aroma of the tobacco must have given her the experience of Pop, almost as though he were still alive. Having us around must have also provided a suitable distraction from her grief because she adjusted well to the unaccustomed explosion of children in her house. One concern she did have at first was that Bloomers, her pet cow, might be frightened with so many noisy children around. But the cow did not seem to care at all.

  Bloomers had been with Nan and Pop on the dairy farm and when they moved into town the cow moved with them. Nan kept Bloomers in the back yard which was not fenced off. In the mornings, Bloomers was usually tied up to the clothes line. It was probably not the wisest choice of stakes because Bloomers got her name from her habit of eating almost anything, including a pair of Nan’s large bloomers. In the afternoons Nan untied Bloomers so she could wander off to the vacant block next door to eat some of the delicious green grass.

  “Don’t go beyond that paddock. You hear me?” Nan would call out as the cow dawdled away with a flick of her tail.

  Bloomers was an obedient cow but she did once get Nan into a spot of bother. One morning there was a knock on Nan’s front door. This was unusual because most people would walk along the side path, past the kitchen window and around to the back door. The front door was only for strangers and bad news. That’s what it was this particular morning: bad news. When Nan opened the door, old Bernie Johnson was standing there with a thunderous look on his face. Old Bernie lived across from Nan and down a few doors. He didn’t care too much for people. He didn’t really care too much for anything except his garden, especially his dahlias which had won prizes at the Bairnsdale flower show.

  When Nan opened the door, old Bernie said, “Mrs. Rowley, your damn cow’s eating my dahlias.”

  Nan sprang into action!

  “That stupid cow,” she said.

  She was off down the front steps in her slippers and virtually rolled down the path with her walking stick propelling her along.

  “If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times; don’t go beyond that paddock,” she muttered to herself.

  Off she went across the road and down to Bernie’s place. Sure enough, there was the ‘damn cow’ happily munching away, the wine-red petals of Bernie’s prize dahlia’s still hanging from the corner of her mouth.

  Nan waved her walking stick and shouted. The poor cow got such a fright it bolted. Nan went after her. Past the rows of dahlias, through Bernie Johnson’s cauliflower patch and out through the gate, across the road and down the hill and around the block they went, both of them kicking up dust.

  It was when they were coming back up the hill behind Nan’s place that Nan gave up the chase. The cow kept going.

  Nan hobbled down the well-worn dirt path in the back yard, huffing and puffing and muttering and shaking her head. She was a bit taken aback when she saw Bloomers still tethered to the clothes line happily munching on the grass around the base of the post. It never occurred to Nan that the cow in old Bernie’s dahlia patch wasn’t Bloomers. She hadn’t stopped to think that it was morning and Bloomers was only untethered in the afternoons.

  Nan pulled up abreast of Bloomers and took a moment to catch her breath.

  “You stupid cow,” she said as she moved on towards the back door.

  Some might have called Nan eccentric but she was the only Nan I had in my life and I thought she was the best Nan ever. She took pleasure in teaching me how to make cakes, pastry and scones.

  “Anyone can cook meat and vegetables. But baking? Now that’s an art,” she said.

  On Saturday afternoons the two of us would have fun together in the kitchen. I learned to make cakes and sponges long before I could boil an egg. Her favourite things to make were scones; we made those a lot.

  “Making good scones is a skill not many people learn,” Nan said. “I’ll teach you how to do it. First you need a good recipe. Get me that recipe book in the top drawer.”

  Her CWA recipe book was in constant use. The CWA (Country Women’s Association) is an organisation that supports women living in isolated areas. The cakes and scones made by their members and often sold at fund raising street stalls were legendary. Many of these recipes were collected and published. Most country women had a copy of at least one CWA recipe book.

  I opened Nan’s up to the page for scones which was yellow from a blend of milk, egg and flour stains. She had her bowl ready on the table with the ingredients arranged
around it: flour, salt, butter, bi-carbonate of soda, cream of tartar and milk.

  “Now,” she said. “Read out to me what it says.”

  “Sift flour and salt. Lightly rub in the butter. Then sift in the raising agents and mix well.”

  “That’s right,” said Nan.

  However, she demonstrated a blithe disregard for the precise instructions of the CWA experts, throwing all the dry ingredients into the bowl and mixing them together with her hands. Then she poured the milk in and stirred the mixture roughly with a wooden spoon.

  “Now what does it say, little’un?”

  “Add all the milk and mix lightly to a spongy dough.”

  “I’ve already done that step,” said Nan.

  “Knead very lightly and roll out to half an inch thick.”

  Nan lifted the mixture onto the floured table and flattened it with her hand.

  “Cut out with a two inch cutter.”

  Nan grabbed a bone-handled knife and cut the flattened dough into squares.

  “Brush with egg or milk.”

  Nan splashed water over the tops of her lumpy squares.

  “Bake in a hot oven.”

  “That bit is important,” she said.

  She sprinkled some flour on a baking tray and placed it in the oven for a few seconds. When it turned brown, she nodded her head in approval. Using a tea-towel to protect her hands, she removed the baking tray. Then she sprinkled more flour on the baking tray and together we lined up her rough scone squares on it. Into the oven they went. Ten minutes later, out they came, browned on the top, three times as big as they were when they went in and each one as light as a feather.

  “Perfect,” she said. “It helps to have a good recipe.”

  In the summer evenings Nan encouraged our noisy ebullience with sing-alongs. She taught us the words to the songs so that we could sing with her. Since none of us seemed to have inherited our father and grandmother’s keen ear for a tune, the result probably sounded like a raucous cacophony of strangled canaries. In our blissful ignorance we belted out the tunes together, rising to a crackling crescendo during choruses such as: Hooray and up she rises, earlie in the morning. We also performed a rousing rendition of a song called Deep in the Heart of Texas. We clapped our hands with the tune and my brothers hollered like cowboys at regular intervals.