by Alan Collins
'A what?' the two women chorused.
'It's Yiddish. Means a bargain. Solly's got a shop up the Junction. We'll go there first thing tomorrow.' He got off the tea chest and headed for the door. He waved to me on the gas box. 'Fish 'n' chips, back in a jiffy, son.' The two women ran after him. Clutching their shopping bags, they called out, 'We're coming too, we'll see you later in the Royal.'
At least they had left the front door open. In the fast-fading light I went from room to room but the only knowledge I had ever had of furniture was either the worn-out bits at Uncle Harry's or, going deeper into my memory, the starkness of the Scarba and Ashfield baby homes. The light finally faded; I enjoyed the momentary pleasure of being able to select which room to sleep in, finally curling up on the travel rug in the front room where a thin sliver of light from a street lamp threaded its beam through the loquat tree. I got up and felt around until I found my father's dustcoat and snuggled into it. What did it smell of ? I don't know. Motorcar? Road dust? I dug into a pocket and found a tiny hanky, which unbelievably still exuded the faintest hint of perfume. I tried to file it against the women Sam had cuddled up against in his days as a Romeo of the road. I settled on Bella with the pert breasts and the dots of perspiration that lay between them like a sprinkling of the tiniest jewels. I fell into an untroubled sleep with my hands between my knees or, to be quite truthful, locked over my dicky.
My father's flash, two-tone brogue shoe stirred me as he gently nudged me into wakefulness. 'Chips, a bit of flake and a bottle of lemonade, son.' I grabbed the newspaper-wrapped feast from him. He helped me up to a seat on a tea chest. He yabbered away at me. I just nodded and grabbed the beautiful, piping hot, reeking in fat fabulous meal. I tore away the newspaper as I dug further with greasy fingers, extracting chips and battered chunks of fish, shovelling them into my mouth like a conveyor belt.
My father looked down at me. There was an unmistakable glint of moisture in the corner of his eye. His hand reached out to my shoulder but changed direction and instead pulled out his key ring. It held a bottle opener shaped like a lady's leg and a slim pocket-knife, souvenirs of some pub or other. He whipped the crown seal off the lemonade bottle and held it out to me. I took a swig and handed it back to him so I could search the last crevices of the newspaper for any skerrick of chip that might have eluded me. Sam sealed this almost magic moment between us by putting the lemonade bottle to his lips.
'Gotta go, son,' he said in between burps. 'The girls will be waiting for me back at the Royal. Now, you'll be right as rain here, Alan, won't you?' He edged towards the door. 'I'll see you in the morning and then we'll all go . . .'
I let out a wail of misery. It must have been welling up in me since I don't know when. The torch now offered a weak yellow beam and as my father reached the front door it died. He slipped through, pulling the door closed behind him. My howling subsided to a few whimpers; I wiped my greasy hands on the dustcoat and, in an act of futile revenge, particularly on the little hanky. I was desperate for a pee but nothing would entice me out the back door into the cobwebfestooned dunny. I lay down once more on the travel rug and slept.
What a place to have dreams in. Yet dream I did. Of Mrs O'Donohue's plumped-up breasts still fresh and engorged with the milk no longer drying on the chin of her son Kevin Fingal O'Donohue, who now sucked on a bottle of Vi-Lactogen. With my pursed Jewish lips clamped onto her, my Jewish nose buried itself into that yielding ivory and eversoIrish Catholic pillow. Now my minuscule dicky cried out for a piss, woke me and demanded relief. I broke free from the dustcoat and ran to the furthest corner of the room. The pee charged out of me, freed at last, laid the dust and hung from the spider webs like the cheapest Woolies glass necklace. Once more I lay down, wrapped in the dustcoat, the last evidence of Sam's days as a travelling salesman. What a wonderful attribute is my acute sense of smell. It led me by the nose back to the dream. I could find pleasure in the soap that had enveloped scratchy Martha, the skivvy who was hightitled 'nurse' at the Scarba Home, and how she had held me in what must have been the prescribed method as stipulated in the home's handbook. It was surely designed to ward off any degree of intimacy.
'Gawd, it stinks of cat's piss in here.' It was the stick insect's screeching that woke me. She was by herself; her print dress brushed my cheek as she stood over me. 'Have you seen any cats around here?' I made the mistake of getting to my feet. Her sneaky eye homed in on the drying damp on my thin summer school pants. In a wheedling voice, she asked me, 'I think you done it, didn't you? Trying to blame a poor little pussy cat, weren't you?'
Not worth answering this charge. I asked her what time it was. The curtainless front rooms of the little cottage were brightly lit by the morning sun. Ma had no watch. Quite civilly she replied, 'You and me best try and get some brekky although God knows where from.' She glanced around the bare room and to my amazement took me by the shoulder, not roughly as on previous occasions. 'There's a ham and beef shop just up Edward Street.' Rummaged in her purse. 'A coupla shillings should do it.' We went out together, up the side lane as she whispered something about 'Them two still at it, I'll bet.' There was a bit of comedy as she pulled herself up short in the shop, about to buy me a ham roll, changing this for a corned beef, even asking me if I wanted mustard! Well, stick insect she might be but by golly, she had no trouble in gobbling down two bread rolls. We walked back to 48 Francis Street and sat like Mickey and Minnie Mouse on the gas box.
'Gawd, I'd love a cuppa tea.' I must have nodded because she once again spoke almost civilly to me. 'Go and have a look in your dad's boxes.' She elbowed me off my perch. 'Them commercial travellers used to carry round a thermos flask in case they got caught bloody miles from a town. Did you know that, Alan?' Shit, oh bloody shit, for just this one moment I was not 'the brat'; I hugged this recognition to me and rushed inside to the chests, scrabbled through layers of clothes, paused only to peek and gasp (once more!) at the framed Norman Lindsay stitchless ladies frolicking beside a waterfall and, sure enough, as Ma Compton had surmised, there it lay, the lifesaver of the lads of the road, the ubiquitous Thermos. It nestled among the remnants of Sam's days as a dandy, the aluminium cap in place, which I unscrewed to reveal another beneath it.
As we sat there with the empty cups and flask, united, Ma Compton and me, with not a drop to drink, my father and his bride ambled sheepishly up the weed-strewn path of 48 Francis Street. Surprisingly their clothes looked quite tidy, not slept in, although I could not vouch for their underwear. They must have had a fair night of it at the Bondi Royal Hotel.
With something of his old knight of the road, goodfella manner, he greeted us with a broad smile, a chuck under the chin for me and a cheery 'G'morning, Ma,' to his motherinlaw. From here on in, Sam attempted to take control and stifle the objections that rose from the two women. He knew (or said he knew) just about every way of shopping wholesale. Once he used the Yiddish word bilik and didn't even bother to tell them its meaning. On looking back, my father must have learnt this smattering of Yiddish words from his mother, my other grandma, who on the occasions she visited me in the Scarba Home or the Ashfield Infants' Home, probably crooned tunelessly to me with softer Yiddish words, not the harsh, denigrating ones that Sam knew.
The trouble with Shirley and her mum was that they had envisaged swanning around the many departments in Anthony Hordern's vast cornucopia, being 'duchessed' by sales people. Now here was her brandnew husband going to get everything 'on the cheap' for their little love nest. Ma Compton actually shuddered as Sam dropped the names of his friends: Moe Cohen - Abe Feldstein - Izzy Jacobs - and so on. From this tribe of Israelite traders, my father could obtain everything they would ever need. Seconds they might be, but they certainly would be bilik.
.... ....
The tension was palpable. One or all of these three adults might boil over and I would be the one to get scalded. I sidled out of the room and headed for my old friend, the gas box. I knew I was missing out on a cup of tea, and I hugged mys
elf to still the hunger rising in me again. Then the familiar, tinny little girl's voice: 'Do you really love yourself thaaat much?'
Gertie, her leather schoolbag on her back, wrapped her arms about herself in a fair imitation of what I had been doing but now self-consciously stopped.
Leaping down from the gas box I found myself running down the weedy path to the front gate to drink in the utterly joyous sight of this little girl, who today had swapped her floral print dress for a sombre dark navy school tunic, white blouse and ankle socks inside patent-leather shoes with shiny buckles.
I drank in this lovely sight by the very lungful. I had no need of tea; the pangs of hunger had gone. Gertie's sausage curls were now subject to the discipline of school; they were imprisoned under a Panama straw hat with the smallest metal badge on its band. There was absolutely nothing, nothing at all about her that I did not drink in and store somewhere, some place where it would never be forgotten (which is why I can now unabashedly put it down on paper).
Also (I am sure I am not imagining it), her littlegirl voice was decidedly more grown-up this morning. 'I'm walking to school, Alan, it's the one down on the beachfront.' She took off her hat and showed me the badge. It read in the tiniest gold letters, 'Bondi Beach Public School'.
The unrestrained blonde curls swept across my hand as I read the school badge. I tingled all over but I took hold of myself enough to tell Gertie I had attended Waverley Primary and was in the third class. This was the school that was nearest to where Uncle Harry and Aunt Cissy lived and if I were ever to be put up a class I prayed the test subject would be gin rummy or show poker.
Gertie started to show signs of impatience. I was examined as to where my schoolbag was, what had I got in my sandwiches and finally the demand, 'Will you show me your exercise book, Alan? I'll wait only a minny while you go and get it.'
'No,' I said desperately, 'you go on and I'll catch you up.' I turned and ran. Gertie petulantly jammed her straw hat on her head and marched off down Francis Street. Inside the house, the trio that controlled my eightyearold life was in conference, which is why they, or at least Ma Compton, had not spotted me nor my lovely, adorable Gertie who by now would have reached the sweep of Bondi Beach. Maybe she was even in the company of a boy my age, swinging his schoolbag with his free hand brushing my Gertie's tunic.
I really don't know what it was that brought about the change in my father, Sampson Collins, one-time knight of the road and now married for nearly one whole day. Perhaps it was the previous night's marital roistering in the Royal Hotel. Now he hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat and proceeded to lay down the law according to Sampson's bilik buying principles.
'Things are crook, girls,' he stated. 'Wouldn't surprise me if there was another war and that means household bits and pieces could become real hard to get hold of. I know from the last war, you couldn't buy so much as a box of matches without queuing for them.'
Shirley listened in obvious disbelief but I could see that Ma Compton was nodding in punctuation as her son-in-law ploughed on, painting a gloomy picture. She knew he spoke the truth - her late husband had returned from Flanders with enough wounds to qualify for a meagre pension and she remembered how tough things had been then.
My father had bought a paper. When I was with Uncle Harry, his one luxury was to have the Sydney Morning Herald delivered. I thought it was a very dull newspaper with no comics but the lady upstairs used to save the Ginger Meggs comic from the Sunday paper for me. Now Sam spread the paper out on a tea chest. I stood on tiptoe and peered at the headlines forecasting more hard times, but Shirley said, 'Turn over until you come to the sale ads, darls.'
Sam passed the advertising section of the paper to Shirley. The two women stabbed their fingers at the department store advertisements, keen to buy there despite his access to a wide circle of Jewish traders where bargains were to be had. Well, something had to be done; here we were with not a scrap of furniture and, as the stick insect succinctly put it, not even a pot to piss in. Shirley and her mother huddled over the paper. Shirley stuck the advertisements under Sam's nose.
'Just look at this, darls, a walnut three-piece bedroom suite, Anthony Hordern's, and you can get it for no deposit and only ten bob a week.' I heard Sam mutter scornfully about it being 'bloody veneer ' comes off on the first hot day.' The three of them remained in a greedy grouping with me just tall enough to see the bottom edge of the paper with its comic strip about someone called Mister Pott. After that I lost interest and sidled outside to the gas box. The morning sun had reached it and I could see down Francis Street right to the point where it seemed to dive into the glistening curve of Bondi Beach.
Gertie had followed the street. I had watched her appear and disappear as she traversed its contours. I knew I should have told my father I was going down that same road but I was already off the gas box and full of myself and what I was about to do. The Bondi Beach Public School, I reasoned, must be near the beach and not so far that it was beyond Gertie's walking capacity. As I very quietly unlatched the front gate a breeze blew up the street and flattened my pee-stained thin pants against my legs. The acrid smell rose up, past my nose, soon to be replaced by the salty air. I hesitated, turned back, but even from the front gate heard the bickering. Bugger it, I swore bravely and broke into a trot. I turned my face upward to the sun; this would be a beaut day for me. Everything looked new and enticing, urging me on, drawing me towards the silvery curve of the beach, placing each step where Gertie had trodden, avoiding the seedy shop-fronts on Campbell Parade by running now on the grassy slope that fringed the beach. Finally, I crossed the road and did not stop until I drew breath, leaning exhausted on the wire fence of the Bondi Beach Public School.
Soon it would be playtime. Gertie would come out into the schoolyard. Here I would stay, hanging on the fence to see her.
...7...
Of course I did not see her, not this morning, nor the next or the next. Nor did Gertie even once pass my own front gate. Did she deliberately avoid Francis Street? Did she take the parallel street that was Sir Thomas Mitchell Road? Should I have been sitting disconsolately on the gas box? No fear - it was just not possible. Inside the house there was a fury of action. Every few minutes I was hauled off the gas box and ordered about by the three of them to perform any number of errands, only some of which took me out of the house and up the street to the shop for a packet of this or that: string, thumbtacks, matches, Champion Ruby cigarette tobacco and Tally-Ho rice-papers.
The furniture had begun to arrive in different vans, some with department store names on them; these brought a bedroom suite and a three-piece lounge suite which Shirley instantly forbade me to sit on. Fat chance - I was barred from the front rooms. Towards dusk, Abe Feldstein's battered truck arrived with an assortment of kitchen furniture. Sam was ready for him, heading off Shirley and Ma's attempts to prevent the unloading of this cut-price stuff. As I carried in a cane-bottomed kitchen chair, Ma grabbed it from me, turned it upside down and read out loud the label stuck to it: 'Made with European Labour Only. See that,' she yelled at Sam, 'bloody lies, that's what it is. It's made by them Chinks - my hubby was awake to their tricks. Them labels are only to fool you. They make 'em all themselves in their factories out at Botany.'
Sam, his position already weakened by the two women's determined shopping forays, tried to defend his purchases of the cheap goods from his mate. I tried to help by asking him where I was to sleep but never got an answer. The furniture had already been placed in the bedrooms, the stick insect claiming the smaller one by dropping her shopping bags inside the door. She indicated the tiny back porch which had the lavatory door at one end and the laundry with its copper tub and cement troughs at the other. A roof of corrugated iron joined the two outhouses. A rolldown canvas blind 'sheltered' this eightfoot by four-foot pathway from the backyard.
This was where I was to sleep. No mistake - Shirley's mother dumped a camp stretcher on the concrete walkway, even went so far as to show me how the
stretcher folded away during the day and was to be stacked in the laundry with the grey cotton blanket. I started to whinge. 'Can't I come in the house?' At that moment it occurred to me that others inside the house might use the walkway during the night and I would have to get up from my stretcher to let them piss. 'What if you get up in the night and want to wee?' There was barely a foot of clearance between the end of the stretcher and the dunny door. Sam appeared at the back door; he looked glumly at me and then at his mother-in-law and said, 'He can't sleep there, it's draughty, it's . . .'
She withered him with a look. 'The brat's not coming in the house.' She played her trump card. 'I'm paying the bloody rent here, in case you've forgotten.'
And that was the bloody end of that. By bedtime the others slammed the doors of their own bedrooms and then the back door. I lay down on the camp stretcher and tried to get some warmth from the cotton army blanket. I was right, though, about the 'visitors'during the night; whenever one of them went to the dunny, I had to get up, half fold the stretcher to let them in and then go back to sleep - which, fortunately I suppose, was not hard. I was worn out from the day's doings.
But you don't die from sleeping with your head outside a dunny. Nor do you learn much by wagging school, which, on the days I went, was miserable enough. Reading though, now that was simply marvellous: I pursued the printed word relentlessly, even if it was the tiny print on the Worcestershire sauce bottle: Ideal on steak, roast meat and cutlets. Adds life to casseroles and gravies. None of which I ever tasted while resident at 48 Francis Street.
I never did thank the elderly couple who ran the 'penny' lending library in Bondi Road and who, for as long as I can remember, never charged me for borrowing books, steering me ever so skilfully into those Australian writers who transported me beyond the dunny door to the limitless horizons of the Australian outback. They wiped from my memory the Bible heroes that Uncle Harry wished me to admire if not emulate. They could not compete with the drovers who battled fire and flood or Banjo Paterson's death-defying horsemen.