by Alan Collins
My mind had meandered over the foregoing as I listened and wondered whether I could smuggle some books with me, and all the while Mrs Bayswaite rabbited on. 'Didja hear what I said, Alan? You could take the train from Central to Windsor Station and Jack would collect you. Then you go by horse and cart to the farm at Pitt Town.' I nodded my head in agreement, already fancying myself with my own cattle dog. She brought me back with a start, spitting out the names of my father and Shirley. 'You leave 'em to me. I reckon they'll both be glad to see the back of you, Alan.' Then she leaned over the fence and patted my head. 'Don't get me wrong, son, I mean it for the best.'
I went back down the yard, down the side passage and sat on the gas box. At that very moment, Gertie's father's car slowed down outside 48 Francis Street. Through the open window, Gertie called for her father to stop. She got out, not in her drab school uniform but in a flouncy floral dress drawn tightly across her sprouting chest buds.
She hung over the ugly rusting front gate. Our two voices overlapped as I sprang off the gas box and ran down to her. 'Gertie, watch out for the rusty bits,' and she answered me in an entirely new voice (not the squeaky one I had stored up in my child's memory of our first meeting); now it was like golden syrup running down the side of the tin. 'Oh, Alan, since daddy drives me I haven't seen you at school at lunchtime and then you run away down the beach all the time.'
'Well, you and the sheilas you go with, you race off to the clothes shops and. . .'
'We don't actually buy anything, we just . . .' she reverted to her littlegirl voice and giggled, 'try on the frocks and the swimsuits.' Gertie then put out her hand to me and urged me through the gate and to the side of her dad's car, a darkblue Buick. For a moment I forgot about Gertie, peering in awe at the plush interior, the amazing dials and levers, the gigantic pearly-white steering wheel and finally the compact figure of her dad, his fingers thrumming on the windowsill while he blew aromatic plumes of cigar smoke into the salty Bondi air. Judging from the joshing around the place and in the Sunday papers, he was everybody's idea of what a Jewish bookmaker looked like.
Gertie opened the rear door, climbed up on the running board and snuggled into the velvety seat, never letting go of me and, with dismaying strength, dragged me up to sit beside her. The back seat of the car was like a miniature lounge room, all plush, and even had tiny flower vases fixed to the walls with lifelike little roses in them. Gertie's dad puffed away on his cigar while, behind his blue haze, the terribly grown-up woman whose leg was alarmingly close to mine gave me a breathless account of her weekend holiday at the Jenolan Caves.
'Ooh, Alan, it was so spooky in there,' she said as she pressed her whole body to mine. 'I wish you could have been there with me.' I boldly put my arm around her shoulder (just like I'd seen the boys do in the pictures on a Saturday afternoon while I was supposed to be riveted by the exploits of some superhero). A magic tingling went from my crotch to my toes and back again a million times. Gertie's face was upturned and her mouth an inch from mine. She kissed me full on the lips, her hand now moist and squeezing mine which, up till then, had been lying limply by my side, not knowing what part it had to play in this new role. Then it took courage and laid its fingers on her bare knee while its mate that was around Gertie's shoulders now ever so lightly came to rest on her chest.
In that instant she was electrified. Gertie disengaged her body from my serpentine coils and called out, 'Daddy, I want to go home, now!'
'You heard the young lady, sonny Jim,' her dad said through a cloud of cigar smoke. He never even turned his head but I heard the ignition fire, and the mighty engine growled even as I fumbled desperately to locate the door handle among the many chrome levers and knobs. I succeeded only in winding the window down. Gertie leaned across me, an action that should have aroused that tingling in me but sadly did not. The door swung open and, whether I was pushed out or fell in a mess on the nature strip, I really do not know. I ducked my head as Gertie pulled the door closed, and when the Buick slid away I struggled to my feet, limped to the front gate of 48 Francis Street and, for want of anything more constructive to do, slumped on the gas box.
.... ....
Before too long, the sixweek break of the Christmas school holidays started. Mid-December, a cloudy day, chilly southerly blowing, folding the waves rolling in on Bondi Beach back on themselves. For me, it meant that the spume would surely find the crevice in the rocks where I liked to secrete myself with my book and comics. Shirley had made it very clear to me that I was not wanted around the house, even less than on school days. I emptied my schoolbag of the rubbish that had accumulated in it, packed it with comics and a book - the librarian had relented and given me David Copperfield. (Years later I discovered that it was a 'children's version': the editors had somehow bowdlerised it, eliminating or softening its harshness and even set it in large type and with benign illustrations.) Together with towel, Speedo cossie and my school jumper I was prepared - except for lunch. Easy! Run down the hill past the greengrocer and grab whatever fruit was stacked on boxes on the footpath or maybe a couple of the big Brownell spuds which I could roast in the ashes lit from the driftwood cast up on the rocks.
I was all set to go when I heard my name called.
'Listen, you young scallywag, come 'ere. I reckon I fixed it up.' Mrs Bayswaite broke off and noisily whispered, 'Is yer ma around?' I had long since ceased correcting her that Shirley Collins (nee Compton) was not my mother.
I dropped my bag in the long grass and went up to the fence. This time her head and shoulders were above it. I peered over to see that she was standing on an upturned bucket. One hand gripped the wobbly palings while in the other she waved a letter which she read out to me. 'It's from Merle, me daughterinlaw, Jack's wife. You read it, Alan, it's all about you.' I took it from Mrs Base (as I had come to call her) and held it to my nose. 'Can't yer bloody read it?' she said critically. 'Yer not supposed to sniff it.' Which was exactly what I was doing ' it smelt deliciously of mint. How did I know? The herb grew in profusion around the drain outside our dunny downpipe. Merle's writing was sturdy, upright and like the teacher's when she wrote in red ink across my schoolwork - except for my English, where she managed some niggardly favourable comments.
I skipped the 'how are you's and got straight down to where
my name was mentioned.
Alan? Collins? Doesn't sound like a Jewish name to me. Are you sure? Also I mean, you know how some people, not of our church I reckon, think they killed Jesus. Well, I'm not going to ask what he's like or anything (see Gen.xiii.8), after all, he's only a child. Eleven did you say? And I suppose it'll be alright because they go to church on Saturday which is their Sabbath like us. Well Mum, it's our busy time we are just starting to put in the seed potatoes. It's a good job he can help with. OK, Jack will collect him from Windsor Station on Wednesday. Will it be only for the Christmas holidays?
Keep well. Love, Merle and the girls.
PS can he pay a little bit for his board?
It all sounded pretty good to me except the Jesus bit but I was fairly used to that from school. And I thought about their seed potatoes and that maybe it was a payback for all the spuds I had nicked from the Dago fruit shop. I handed the letter back to Mrs Base and mumbled thanks. She actually smiled and then spoilt it all by telling me that I had better get the train from Central Station at six in the morning. 'Farmers are up at sparrow's fart,' she said. 'Cows got to be milked. Y' lucky they're vegetarians, these Seventh-day Adventurists. No pigs or chooks to feed, eh?'
It was unsaid that with this early start I could sneak away unnoticed. Suddenly she rose another foot above the fence. Frank had ambled down the yard and lifted her off the bucket. He threw cold water on my enthusiasm by swearing over his shoulder, 'Jack'll straighten out the fuckin' Jewboy.' Mrs Bayswaite called through the palings to leave a note for my dad. 'Tell him yer goin' for a country holiday. No need to say where, I'll fix that up.'
I trudged back down our yard, retrieved
my schoolbag and went into the laundry where my few clothes were neatly folded and sat on shelves made from fruit boxes. I should've been a bloody greengrocer: from the labels on the boxes I knew that apples came from Batlow, oranges from Mildura, potatoes from Tasmania and assorted greens came from an outlying Sydney suburb named Botany and the boxes all bore Chinese names. Maybe, I dreamed, these Chinks (which was what everyone called them) jumped ship from Cook's Endeavour when he sailed into Botany Bay, missing Sydney Harbour by just a few stupid miles. Cook would have been labelled by my father as a shmok, Yiddish for a dope but literally meaning a dicky.
This brought Sam to mind. At this time he would still be at the munitions factory where he seemed to spend half his shift fashioning cigarette lighters from huge hexagonal brass nuts. They had pennies brazed to each side, a wick and a flint wheel, and there you are, mistersoldiersouvenirhunter, only five bob. He would come home quite late, stumble over me as he went to the dunny, 'Y' orright son?' A piss then a pat on the head as he went back to the bedroom. Shirley: 'Y'orta be sleeping outside with the brat.' This night, having straightened out the stretcher once more, I fell into a really good sleep and dreamed of nothing at all except maybe to memorise Frank and Merle, Merle and Frank - and then awoke at dawn realising I had mixed up Frank with Jack and had to learn it all over again. Which I did to the clacketyclack of the train as it rolled sedately through the rich flats of the river that has three names: Hawkesbury, Nepean and Wollondilly.
At Bondi Beach Public School I had reached sixth class for no other reason, I suspect, than that I could read the poetry of the bush balladeers almost without looking at the primer. Teachers overlooked the disastrous arithmetic I presented to them; instead, I shamelessly showed off my pathetic knowledge by parroting what I read. From the Bondi Road news- agent, I had got last week's copy of the rural newspaper. As the train trundled on, the only time I looked up from it was when the wheels made a different sound. We were crossing the Hawkesbury River bridge. The river wound below me and, on its way, lapped the shore of Jack Bayswaite's potato farm. The Land was a beaut read. The farm machinery drawings had me enthralled by their weird and wonderful shapes. I especially fell for the ones that had dinky little iron seats shaped just like your bum and you sat up like a king with the steering wheel of the tractor or the reins of the draught horse, making furrows as straight as lines drawn on school paper. Then there were the advertisements of rural properties for sale. Sprawling houses nestled among gums or sheltered behind giant cypress pines. They were never described as houses, always homes - some gracious, some historic and all with euphonious names like Araluen and Coomandook, and one that made me grin with recognition: Windermere, like the English daffodil poet Wordsworth wrote about, and here it was in western New South Wales!
Now the early morning steam rising from the paddocks gave way to blinding shafts of light as the sun's rays hit the galvanisediron roofs. The train of only three carriages heaved a sigh as it trundled into Windsor Station like a woman dropping her heavy shopping bags on her doorstep. This was the end of the line. I had become quite fond of my little wooden box of a compartment, sometimes imagining what it would be like setting up home in it - a bed where the seat was, a stove next to the tiny folding table and the dunny on the far side where the roar of a passing train on the down track would drown out any farts, pees or plops. But the best thing was I could shut the bloody door on . . . I don't know what, but shit, I could close myself in!
Reluctantly and a bit fearfully, I swung open the door of my 'flat' and stepped onto the platform. The Roman figures on the huge station clock showed the large hand at III and the small hand at VIII. The few passengers strolled through an archway and disappeared down the street. I carried my schoolbag, perhaps pretending it was just luggage like everyone else had. The only car was a huge Hupmobile about the same size as Gertie's dad's car, only this one looked twice the size because of the weird charcoal-burning contraption on the back, meant to take the place of petrol. I stared at it. A deep brown voice said, 'Stinks to buggery, don't it?' As the man on the dray with the reins around his wrist was the only living thing at this early hour, I walked up to the horse's head and asked manfully, 'Are you Jack Bayswaite?' Jack flicked the reins, the horse dropped its head and nuzzled my pocket that still had a few potato chips in it.
'Throw us your bag, young'un.' He caught it and dropped it at his bare feet. Next he leaned down and grabbed my wrist, hauling me up like a . . . like a sack of spuds, the thought flashed through me. Wonder of wonders - next, without a word, Jack handed me the reins and reaching under the seat found a tobacco pouch and matches. He rolled a smoke, lit it and said, 'Up Mickey, up.' I felt the slack go out of the reins, the dray did a U-turn, Mickey settled down to a trot and the reins once more went slack in my hands.
Jack dragged on his rollie. I studied the thick blond hair on his arm, then his freckled face under the straw hat. Under the long blond eyelashes he surveyed me too.
'You're a skinny little bugger, aren't you?'
What could I say, it was only too obvious.
'I always thought you Jew b.... you Jewish kids were as fat as sausages.'
Here it comes, I thought with a shiver of fear. He lapsed into silence. The next time he spoke was in a whisper. Why? We were trotting alongside miles of ploughed paddocks, some showing feathery green tops; on the horizon, the steady thrum of a tractor motor. Apart from the horse and the sulphur- crested cockatoos, who's to hear?
'Y' didn't see me smoke, didja Alan, didja?'
I loved it. We were conspirators. If this was to be a bond between me and Jack, bloody great. And he called me by my name. Up on this dray seat I was not the brat.
'It's because of your Aunty Merle, my wife that is. She told me to tell you to call her Aunty. It makes it easier for the little girls or something.'
'Doesn't she like you smoking, Jack?' He didn't ask to be Uncle Jack. I was glad about that; after all, it seemed as though we might have a common enemy. We could even be mates.
Now it started to come out about being a Seventhday Adventist. It was a wonderful novelty for me to hear someone else explain their beliefs defensively. Under duress, sometimes from teachers, sometimes from kids in the playground applying the 'Chinese burn' to my wrist, I had to defend Jewishness of which I was painfully ignorant.
Jack said, 'I don't suppose my mum told you anything. No, I don't suppose she would. She wasn't too shook on my marriage to one. Still, it's turned out alright. Merle's a great wife and mum.' Jack took the reins from me. 'We're nearly there, Alan.' He barely had time to explain that the faith didn't allow smoking. 'Or drinking either but that doesn't worry me. You've seen what a wreck Frank is from the booze.'
The horse led off the tarred road, its hoofs muffled by the dirt for the next half-mile or so, then through a gap in the white post-and-rail fence, stopping at last where a feed drum stood ready. It stuck its velvety nose in it and snuffled contentedly. Stupidly I realised I, too, was hungry. A bag of potato chips from Sydney to Windsor would not sustain anybody. Not even a skinny Jewish kid from 48 Francis Street, Bondi.
...9...
With his huge hands on my shoulders, Jack steered me into the house, straight through to the kitchen. Merle stood by the table looking like one of those clean, calm ladies I had seen in magazine advertisements for Mother's Choice Self-raising Flour. I took in the apron, the pickle jar with sprigs of wattle in it, then the two girls, each with one or other feature of their parents. 'You look after this young shaver, Merle,' Jack said and continued through the house, the screen door latching behind him. Without looking up, Merle said into the pot she was stirring, 'Alan, isn't it? These two are June - she's the big one - and Florence -we call her Flo. Say how do you do to Alan, he's Jewish. They're Seventhday Adventists, well, so am I. Do you know what that is, Alan?' She stopped stirring and went on in her low monotone voice which I found quite compelling. 'We believe in the millennium.' She pursed her lips, perhaps about to explain when Flo spoke.
'There will be a thousand-year period . . .' June's hand shot up like at school. 'After the resurrection.' Merle's steady voice corrected her, 'After the first resurrection.'
Merle reminded me of Uncle Harry and his Bible yarns, only even I could see that this was no storytelling of the olden days, this was dinky-di very serious stuff. I concentrated on the words but the only connection I could make was with erection, which I knew about by sneaking looks into Uncle Harry's Psychology of Sex, and to my discomfort my dicky gave a twitch. And I was looking at June! She must have been about twelve or thirteen I reckoned, conjuring up an image of Gertie. The two sisters were like chalk and cheese; June was her dad all over again. Lank blonde hair hung halfway down her back while some strands of it lay across her chest, shaped for her by the tightness of a school jumper that had been frequently through the washtub. She sat at the kitchen table with a school geography book open to show the rivers of eastern Australia. It was the same book that I used and had thrown out of my schoolbag before I went 'up country'. Gosh, if I had it with me now I could show her what a clever dick I was.
Too late. Jack Bayswaite strode into the room in his socks, then pulled up a chair for himself and for me. I had been standing on the one spot since he'd brought me in. Nobody had invited me to sit down. Now I was directly across the pine table from Flo. Two years younger than June but shrewder, tougher, with penetrating eyes like her mother. As with June, I could only see her from the waist up. She was as taut as a sash cord, her hair with its tinge of red drawn tight against her skull, except for a forbidding fringe that was straight across her forehead like a school ruler. Whether by intent or not I could not tell, but Flo, now and on many other occasions, positioned herself equidistantly between her mother and father as though in obedience to some formula for neutrality.