Alva's Boy

by Alan Collins

  He looked neither to left nor right but marched up to the small ticket window, where a motherly woman put down her knitting long enough to press the pedal that issued a ticket.

  CONTINUOUS! THE THRILLS OF PARIS BY NIGHT!

  GIRLS, GIRLS AND MORE GIRLS!

  NO PASSOUTS

  Sam disappeared into the dark. The ticket lady saw me and gave me a handsign to make myself scarce. I trudged off with feelings entirely new to me. What should I think of what I had seen? In a rush of judgement I knew shame, but by the time my steps had taken me to the ferry wharves at the Quay, a new maturity came upon me. What he was up to was not that different from me grabbing my crotch when I saw near naked girls on the walls of the barber's shop, in the pages of Truth newspaper or in the National Geographic with its pictures of chocolate-skinned bare-breasted women - the pages torn out and passed under the desk at school.

  I jumped on the first ferry due to leave. Standing in the bow of the ferry, with the sea breeze as penetrating as a knife thrust, I felt clean. So clean, I didn't even bother to wash my hands after going to the dunny. I sat on the seat and opened my lunch.

  ...14...

  I had a feeling about the Sydney ferry names, particularly those called after wellbred ladies. This one I noticed after I had strutted about like a captain on his bridge. It was the Caroline Chisholm, which was stencilled on the liferings and the stern of the lifeboat. I dredged from my memory and a history book read at school during a geometry lesson, that this was a 'great lady' who lived in the last century. Was she one of those suffragettes? The poor woman, I sympathised. Perhaps it was like TB or polio. But I was nabbed by the teacher before I could read right to the end to find out what it really was she was suffering.

  This ferry chugged under the Harbour Bridge, unlike the usual trip I took to Manly. It tied up ever so briefly at pretty jetties that poked their white-painted fingers into the upper reaches of the harbour. I plotted our progress on the glass- enclosed map on the ferry bulkhead. Aha, we were about to enter the mouth of the Paramatta River. Aha, I murmured once more to myself: Paramatta - John Macarthur - imported Spanish merino sheep. I never once had a use for an isosceles triangle but in Anthony Hordern's store windows down in Haymarket there was always a display of 'pure merino' wool jumpers. The window dresser put in a bale of hay and a stuffed merino ram with so much wool over its head I'm sure it would run into a fence post!

  River-smart pelicans sat atop the mooring poles, waiting for mugs like me to toss them remnants of their lunch, except that I had wolfed down the two doorsteps of bread and plum jam. IXL was the cheapest in the grocers and not surprisingly: the half-pound tin was mostly sugar, water and plum juice. This set me to thinking about Sam. What little I knew (thanks to Havelock Ellis) gave me a vague idea of my father's behaviour - although I did not know enough to classify it as a problem. With childish harsh judgement of the poor bastard deprived of any sexual solace, I was sure he was tormented that his erstwhile Yiddisher mate Abe Feldstein was now bold enough to leave his van contemptuously outside 48 Francis Street. Still, it was hard for me to feel any real sympathy for him. It was not an emotion I was familiar with. I neither got it nor gave it.

  I had, of necessity, become street-smart: as with the pelicans on the river, surviving came before all else. I had the contour of a skinned rabbit; I weighed around six stone and would barely have cast a shadow, all of which made my nose more prominent. Most of the year I was a deep sunburnt shade, which led to an odd escapade and a few quid. Among my Bondi Beach mates I had swapped the label of Ikey for that of Mahatma. If I wrapped a towel around my fleshless frame, there was a marked resemblance to Gandhi!

  One day a notice had appeared in the local paper:

  Boys needed to play the parts of Arab urchins.

  Apply The Cinesound Film Studios at Bondi Junction.

  What a bunch of scallywags! We had no illusions about who we were: Dagos, Greeks and me, the stand-alone Jewboy. Although it was a school day, this was no handicap - wagging didn't worry us, except perhaps for me; it was an English and History day, which I hated missing. The selection was swift. None of us actually failed; those in excess were told to shove off and given ten bob for what they rightly reckoned was 'bugger-all'. A bossy woman with a clipboard took down the names of the rest of us. Some of us gave made-up ones - mine was Ivan Hoe. We were herded onto a bus and driven for miles to the sandhills of Cronulla. I felt crook from hunger, being too excited to take my boring plum-jam sandwiches with me. Once there, I was grabbed for what turned out to be the only speaking part for us Arab urchins. All around me were very nervous 'Australian soldiers', ostrich plumes in their slouch hats as they tried to control their horses unused to sand, stinging wind and flies.

  I was wondering which 'soldier' would bite the dust, Western style, when a voice boomed through a trumpet thing, 'Ivan, IVAN, for Chrissake!'

  'Who, me?' '

  You're supposed to be a little wog kid, now come here and . . .'

  My already deeply-tanned skin was enough; I was given a raggedy striped nightdress, led by the hand to a wobbly painted backdrop and told to watch for the horsemen to come riding by. I waited interminably for what, many years later, I learned was supposed to be the Diggers' triumphant entry into Beersheba. The things you learn as a very junior film star: the Australian Light Horse Brigade thought they were going to a place of 'beer an' sheilas'.

  Finally, these gallant 'soldiers', mounted on ridingschool hacks, ambled by in front of me.

  'Now, Ivan, do as you're bloody well shown,' the voice bellowed.

  I ran up to one of the horsemen, grabbed hold of his stirrup and yelled, 'Hey, mister, you want jiggy-jig my sister?'

  Then it was over. I got a whole five pounds for my bit. My acting career was brief. An officious inspector from Child Welfare discovered that the film company didn't have a permit to use school kids.

  These reminiscences made the ferry ride back to Circular Quay from Paramatta slow and pleasant. The riverside parks and suburbs slid by and I struggled with new feelings that now centred on my relations with my father. Yeah, I discovered long before I read it, the child is father to the man.

  .... ....

  Shortly after my shameful shadowing of poor Sampson Collins, he went back on day shift at the munitions factory. My halfbrothers (of whom I cannily felt sure the second little boy was not fathered by Sam) were, in their schooling, even more sequestered from me. Neatly attired in navy-blue school pants and a blazer pocket with a cross and Latin on it, they attended the Catholic school no more than a cricket ball's throw from my Wellington Street High School. Back and forward they went, five days a week, determined (and no doubt instructed) to keep to the opposite side of the street, not even converging at the same time when returning to 48 Francis Street. Sampson Collins, putative Dad of at least one, got the cold shoulder from them. Like politics, domesticity also made strange bedfellows. The nastiness of the situation threw my father and me together, a weird, inexplicable, loveless bond that neither of us knew how to handle.

  School was the one constant in my life. Its darkred bricks, poorly lit classrooms, smelly toilets and pensionable World War I teachers were only made bearable by my determined exploitation of a talent for swimming and reading. In a school's precarious hierarchy, I needed these to survive. I absorbed schoolyard anecdotes of family doings, adroitly avoiding my own situation. Among my ethnic gang, I was aware that some of them, too, were reticent about their home life. Running free with them seemed to preclude any reference to what went on in their houses. It suited me. What did I have to contribute anyway? Perhaps the omission was taken up with boasting and the ever-present need to maintain a place in the hierarchy.

  I secretly hungered after Gertie. On one or two occasions, I caught a passing glimpse of her seated primly in the front seat of her dad's Buick. This while I was hanging on like grim death to the running board of the Bondi tram, selling the morning papers. Her picture appeared once in a Sunday paper as Trudy
Ronson in her new uniform, enrolling at Sydney Girls' High School. Well, back in the racing guide her dad was still Harry Rosen, prominent rails bookie.

  .... ....

  I was a good saver. It never occurred to me buy anything for myself. I was fed, after a fashion, and clothes were minimal. If I had a problem it was where to secrete the money that I earned. The school had a bank teller come once a week and your passbook was stamped as you handed over your cash. I hated parting with it; somewhere in the past, there was an echo of old people recalling a time when there was a 'run on the banks'. You couldn't get your money out, they cried. On the other hand, there was no safe place at 48 Francis Street where I could hide away the Greys tobacco tin that held a mix of coins and banknotes. One day, I approached the dour old man who ran the lending library. By now we had reached an understanding -with an economy of word and gesture, the silent passing of pence across the counter in exchange for a book, we completed the transaction. He hardly ever looked up, his hand knew exactly where the date stamp was and, for my part, I silently held the page open for his stamp.

  For all that, I trusted him.

  'Will you mind this tin for me?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's because I can't keep it safe...'

  'I know. Just leave it.'

  'It's got nearly twenty-five quid...'

  'Give me the threepence you owe me.'

  I took the small silver coin from my pocket, put it gingerly on the tobacco tin and slid it across the counter. The book I wanted, The Swiss Family Robinson, was ready for me and he stamped it. This was the only time I ever saw his eyes. He was not about to spoil the moment by actually smiling, just the faintest nod of the head sealed the transaction.

  Oddly enough, I had no real need for money. Long ago, I had surreptitiously stopped going on a Sunday morning to Aunt Enid's. Sam never asked me, although I occasionally took the bus ride to Rose Bay on a summery Sunday morning. I would walk past Enid and Bert's flat with hardly a pause - I certainly had no need of their largesse or their nervous haste for me to be on my way with their bloody sixpence or even a hardboiled egg!

  My will to survive must have been strong. The hate, the abuse and the beltings, the constantly disturbed sleep as the other occupants of 48 Francis Street woke me and pushed me aside on their way to the dunny, had no effect on me. I am not sure it even lasted into manhood.

  .... ....

  One thing was certain though: I took miserly pleasure in watching my tobaccotin hoard of cash grow. To this end I saw a notice in the newsagent's window:

  WANTED

  Lad to put up

  BLACKOUT PAPER

  Must be between 10 & 14

  With parents' permission

  A forged letter that would have fooled nobody and I was ready to go. The blackout paper regulations were for those many Bondi flats with windows facing seawards. Husbands and sons were away at the war, 'the little woman'at home was struggling to raise kids and keep her job in a munitions or clothing factory. She could not manage without the aid of stalwarts like me. I worked out a system: arrive about teatime, apologise and await the expected invitation to 'grab a bite with us son, before you start'.

  She looked me up and down. 'Gawd son, you're skinny, you look like a match with the wood shaved off!' She sat me down at what was her place at the table. Sausages smothered in Gravox that turned into logs floating down the Amazon amid the High Andes of mashed potatoes. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my neck. 'Haven't I seen you going into the Jews' church in Bondi Road on a Saturday morning?' Here it comes, I thought, another crack about Jews and money.

  'Christ, I wish I could get my lot to go to St Pat's like the Jews.' She laughed at the mix-up. 'Well, you know what I mean.'

  When I'd polished off the raspberry jelly, she took me into the bedroom that had a window looking out to sea. A hand some soldier, his slouch hat at a cheeky angle, gazed at me from his picture frame. I stood on a chair and she passed up the blackout paper. Did she really need me to help? She stretched up and her breasts rose and her hands clasped my hips to hold me steady. And I did need steadying. My dear little untried cock was struggling to get free of my shorts. As I pasted the paper the room got darker and her hands slipped around to my pants front. Her face was pressed into my bum. I was her prisoner. I was shaking so much the paste pot fell from my nerveless hands. It broke the spell. I jumped down from the chair. Did the handsome soldier in the frame wink at me? Much later I would recall that the claggy paste and my meagre ejaculation looked the same.

  No more blackout paper pasting for me; too risky. I had to try something else. There were days when I rolled cigarettes for a welloff bloke too mean to buy readymades. There were times when I was 'orange boy' for the Eastern Suburbs rugby league team, a job I got through Harry Rosen the bookie, Gertie's dad, who had most of the team in his debt.

  The frontrow forward in the team was a gigantic man, a policeman whose beat was Hall Street, Bondi, and who suspected I was one of the gang stealing from the greengrocers. On the field he would single me out at the orange break, yelling, 'Over here, Ikey!'

  One day after the game he grabbed me by the arm, streaming sweat and reeking of liniment. 'Ikey, listen to me. I see crooks every day and they start off like you, stealing a few spuds and then, Christ knows where they finish. If you want money, you've got to work for it.'

  It's alright for you, I thought, looking at his massive legs and arms, you could lift a tram back on its tracks. He wagged a finger at me. 'I've got just the job for you. There's a couple of us coppers living not far from you. You know all those silver buttons on our uniform? Bugger to keep shiny, they are. Now if you come round after school twice a week, we'll give you five bob to polish 'em for us.'

  It was part genuine offer, part warning which I took to heart, especially after discovering that he was the youngest son of Mrs Bayswaite - and probably knew quite a bit about me from his mother.

  ...15...

  The war still seemed at a distance from me. My father, working shifts at the munitions factory, was as remote as the ships that sailed past Bondi Beach. When they cleared Sydney, they made a sharp turn south, continued on their voyage and for a while were only a few miles offshore. Sam had a pair of ancient binoculars, the deteriorating lenses barely able to bring the vessels close enough for me to see the crew. From my crevice in the rocks of Ben Buckler on the North Bondi headland, I kept my eye on them. Their names were supposed to be obliterated for safety's sake but, curiously, they kept the shipping companies' distinctive markings on the funnels. I had a booklet listing the various shipping lines so I could identify them. I dare say so could the enemy; German and Japanese submarines lay in wait for them.

  Perhaps it was sheer bravado that caused a Japanese submarine in June 1942 to attempt to shell the Sydney Harbour Bridge from nine miles out to sea. Ten shells were fired in four minutes, most of them landing in the eastern suburbs where the Jewish refugees had settled. Quite a few took fright. Their suitcases, evidence of their caution and of their previous flights from war, were hauled down from the tops of wardrobes. One shell lobbed into the very heart of Bondi and stuck in a crossroads, looking ludicrously like a tumescent phallus.

  My association with Mrs Gelman continued. As her friend 'Eln' I still helped her with greengroceries, feeling quite at home in her flat, which she refused to leave. Even I could tell that I was a substitute for her dead grandson Louis; she questioned me with a charming lack of reserve which, couched in her weird syntax, was hard to resist. I even told her of my father's visit to the risque cinema.

  'Freud,' she murmured and shook her head. 'You are still a child, you do not understand zese things.'

  'Yes I do,' I replied through a mouth stuffed with strudel and cream. 'I read about it in Havelock Ellis. It's because of his dicky - or something,' I finished lamely.

  Mrs Gelman then gave me the first kiss I had ever had from an adult who was not a relative. She gently hauled me to my feet and pressed her lips t
o my cheek at the same time holding me to her chest. She brought Louis's photo to the table and propped it up in front of me. She even tried to brush my unruly hair in the style of the photo. Things were going too quickly for me. I freed myself from her embrace. 'That apple cake was grouse,' I told her.

  'Voss is grouse?'

  'Beaut.'

  'Ach, Eln, I think I speak better English than you.' She dabbed at my lips with her handkerchief. I wanted to pull away but there it was, a perfume on it that took me back. Was it Bella? Which of my father's flames? Mrs Gelman stood with her hands on her hips in a pose I recognised as similar to Sam's when he was about to make one of his portentous pronouncements. My eyes roamed around the living room, which over the past few months had become familiar to me - the glass- fronted china cabinet nearly to ceiling height and the pieces carefully spaced out to convey the impression that there was more than there actually was. In fact, it was all that the woman had salvaged from her European home. On earlier occasions, I had paused in wonder at the many photographs that covered the walls of this compact flat and seemed to me to bring the walls in closer.

  But in the instant that Mrs Gelman had put her arms around me, the photos took on a new meaning.

  She now took my hand and led me down the hall, festooned with pictures of stern men and women dressed up to the nines, the women in fussy billowing dresses, the men looking very much like those I remembered from illustrations that accompanied Kipling's yarns of the British lords in India - stony-faced superiority! Except, she told me to my juvenile amazement, they were German! We entered a small bedroom. It was disturbingly neat, not a cover, not a pillow, not a curtain that had not been considered and placed with precision; even a towel on a delicate little stand.