Alva's Boy

by Alan Collins

  What did tempt me was a very large beach towel with the emblem of the Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club on it. I straightened up and entered the shop. I would fool nobody into thinking I was a lifesaver - me, a skinny bignosed Jewboy with the first layer of sunburnt skin already peeling off me. But right then I wanted that towel more than anything else in the world, and certainly more than anything in the shop. For years I had taken to the beach a rag-thin scrap of towel not fit to dry a dog. Now I could see myself wrapped in the luxurious folds of this wondrous towel, the club emblem falling casually across my shoulders. I would then walk from one end of the beach to the other, enveloped in it so nobody could actually see my narrow chest and matchstick arms and legs.

  'Yeah?'

  'Please show me that towel,' I touched it as it hung on a shop model. 'Please get it down for me.'

  'Can't have that one, sonny Jim. It's for display only.' He was a very big man with tight grey curls, and built, as one of my old gang would say, 'like a brick shithouse'. He turned to leave me. I tapped him on the arm. He spun around. The moneybag thumped against my ribs. 'Please can you get me one I want to buy one I have the money.' It came out in a rush.

  'Well, bugger me,' he grinned, 'you've got chutzpah, sonny Jim.' He stroked his chin. 'You're a Yiddisher boy if I'm not mistaken.'

  He turned and went into the stockroom at the rear, returning with my towel. He went behind the counter with it. Again, with the assurance of a man with money, I asked him to open it up. A bit reluctantly he took it out of its cellophane envelope and shook it open. I almost grabbed it with excitement and draped it over my shoulders. Mandrake's cape had nothing on it to compare with the magic of this towel. I was transformed into I don't know what but it felt simply marvellous.

  The salesman was looking curiously at me. He came around to my side of the counter and bent down to stare into my face. 'Now I know,' he said, 'now I know who you are. Of course, I've seen you around here before. You're poor Alva's boy, aren't you.'

  What could I say? Bloody nothing. I was fearful of not getting my towel. The genial giant went on. 'I'm your dad's second cousin, Arthur Symonds. This is my shop. You're Alan, if I'm not mistaken. Lost track of you after poor Alva died. It was your idiot father who messed things up. Half the family wanted to take you in, raise you, all that sort of thing. But no, mister know-it-bloody-better Sam put you into those bloody homes. Well, we all just washed our hands of the whole business.'

  He must have stored this away for all . . . well, for all these years. He continued to shake his head and mumble, 'Alva's boy, would you believe it?' The towel was still around my shoulders. I gripped it tightly. 'Mr Symonds,' I said as firmly as I could manage, 'can I still buy this towel . . . please?'

  Ever so gently he removed it from my shoulders, folded it in its original creases and put it back in the bag. He examined the price tag and leaned across the counter. His toned changed. 'Now, young Alan Alva Collins - yes, I know a bit about you - you know what this towel sells for? Nineteen and eleven, that's what I would normally sell it for, but for you, as you're family,' he drew breath, 'only fifteen bob - always assuming you've got the means to pay.'

  What did I know about family? Not much when you add it up. My Aunt Enid, a long-dead Aunt Fanny stretched out in her wooden box, a few bestforgotten others. I didn't count my father's numerous wives as family. Yet I felt I could trust 'Uncle' Arthur Symonds. Don't ask me why. In front of him, I unbuttoned my shirt and took out the Commonwealth Bank savings bag. He watched me closely but did not speak. I put my hand in the bag and felt around, trying with my fingers to extract the right amount. It would not work. I put the bag on his counter, loosened the drawstring until I could actually see inside. I could now extract a tenbob note, two twobob coins and one shilling coin. Total: fifteen shillings.

  'My God, you are a chip off the old block, Alan, thanks.' He scooped up the money and fed it into a huge National cash register that rang up the money with a loud ring of its bell. Next, he tore a long sheet of a brown paper off a roll and expertly wrapped up my towel. Then string went around it and a loop to carry it.

  'What are you going to do with all that money, Alan?' Arthur Symonds asked kindly. I felt a ninny stuffing the bag back under my shirt. I truthfully did not know what to do. Fancy having money being a problem! I shook my head in reply. 'Dunno, Mr Symonds, what do you reckon?'

  'Call me Uncle Arthur, why don't you?'

  Was this because of my bag of money, I wondered. Does suddenly being 'rich' bring new worries, even new relatives? The need to respond was put aside by the shop door being filled by the portly figure of Gertie Rosen's dad, with his most divine, gorgeous, devastatingly beautiful daughter close behind. As the two of them moved down the store, Uncle Arthur shook hands with Harry Rosen and uttered the all-encompassing Yiddish word for 'how are you, what's new', etc. etc. - "NU?"

  I stood there dumbfounded, hugging my package to my already bulging chest. Arthur Symonds said, 'Harry, this lad is my, er, my nephew I suppose, anyhow it's Alan Collins, you remember? Poor Alva's boy?'

  Harry looked me up and down, took the cigar from his lips and nodded. 'I think Gertie's met him once or twice.'

  The divine Gertie shook her head in mild annoyance, firmly correcting her father. 'Now Daddy, please try and remember, it's Trudy, alright?' She turned her full attention then to me and in melting tones, still with the faintest trill of her little girl's voice, 'How are you, Alan? Still living in Francis Street?' Before I could answer, she asked me what I had bought.

  Arthur stepped in. 'Well, he's just gone and bought the most expensive towel I've got in the shop, that's what ' and paid for it himself.'

  Gertie smiled sweetly. I pointed at the towel on the shop model. 'It's like that one there.'

  'Lovely,' she said, 'just what a nice boy like you needs, being so keen on the beach and all that.'

  Oh, I'm a nice boy, am I? Was this a verbal pat on the head or was I whatever a nice boy should be? Now and again I suppose I was a nice boy, like when I helped Mrs Gelman with her vegies and when I was riding on the plough on Jack Bayswaite's potato farm. But, oh so lovely Gertie (or Trudy) standing there in a flouncy blue floral dress, you don't know the half of it. Let me tell you of how I stole fruit from the Dagos' shops or sometimes gave short change selling papers on the tram at six in the morning and cheating Yanks while you, divine Trudy, were snug between soft snowy sheets. And beautiful girl, while you are dining off real china plates I am standing at a copper washtub eating scrag-end meat from an enamel dish. Do you have an indoor dunny at your home on Dover Heights? Do any of the nice boys you know sleep with their heads against a dunny door, their feet against a wash-house door? Do they have to fold up their camp stretchers two or three times a night to let their parents go for a pee?

  Dear Trudy! We had both lived our childhood in Bondi, the centre of Jewish life in Sydney, and except for a year or two when we both attended Bondi Beach Public School, our paths could never cross. Without a word, we sidled off to a corner of the shop, partially hidden by the life-size cutout of Don Bradman. The intervening years seemed to fall away. I put my parcel on the floor, stood close to her and reached out for her hands. She did not object. I leaned towards her. The bag of money fell forward and bumped her chest. I tried to retrieve it and, in doing so, caught hold of her breasts. She remained demurely calm while my heart, in truth the whole of me for the merest instant, did not seem a part of me. I straightened up.

  She put her hand on my shirtfront. 'What have you got there, Alan?'

  'It's my money,' I said hoarsely. 'It's my savings, it's all I've got - Trudy.'

  'That's OK, Alan, my daddy sometimes does that when he's carrying too much money at the races.'

  Holy shit, would you bloody well believe it? Harry Rosen, bookmaker, carried his dough around his neck? There and then, I unbuttoned my shirt and took the bag from around mine. I dropped it at my feet, took Trudy's hands once more and pulled her to me and kissed her. All she said
was, 'Well, Alan, it's been a long time since we snuggled up on the back seat of Daddy's car.'

  Uncle Arthur was wrapping up something for Harry Rosen. Trudy nonchalantly sauntered over to her father. When the purchase was handed to him, the two of them walked to the door. Trudy paused a moment, turned and fluttered her fingers at me. 'Bye now, Alan, hope we meet again ' soon.'

  If she said anything else, it was swallowed up by the rich click of the car door closing on them and the purr of the Buick as it pulled away from the kerb.

  ...17...

  Arthur Symonds, his arms folded over his chest, a smile a mile wide on his open face, steered me back to the centre of the shop and burst into laughter. 'What was that I said before about chutzpah, young'un? You've got it in spades, sonny Jim, and no mistake.' He drew breath. 'Bold as brass, there you were kissing Harry Rosen's little girl and hiding behind Don Bradman!' And he went off into another fit of laughter. 'Caught behind, wouldn't you say?'

  I saw the joke but with the taste of Trudy's lips still on mine I didn't think it was as funny as all that. The bag of money now dangled from my wrist. It was beginning to become an encumbrance. Arthur Symonds sat me on a high stool and then began very skilfully to draw out what I could tell him of my life. Poor Arthur, he was about to open a floodgate. When he realised what he had started, he shut the shop door and put out a sign: 'Back in 15 minutes'.

  We were sitting virtually eye to eye; Arthur folded his arms and then, fearing he may have looked a bit intimidating, shoved his hands in his pockets. There was an eerie silence, broken for me by the cheering sound of the Bondi tram rattling down the hill to the beach. I wished I was on it with my new towel around my neck instead of perched uncomfortably on a high stool, wondering what was expected of me.

  Ignoring a tap on the shop's window, Arthur began by asking me my age but before I could reply, 'I reckon you'd be about twelve? Maybe even thirteen? Right?'

  'Fourteen,' I answered, 'a couple of weeks ago.'

  He looked beyond me, then he said softly, 'Poor Alva ' and now here you are -poor Alva's boy.'

  I slid off the stool. There seemed to me to be no gap in time from the infant Alan to the brat to 'poor Alva's boy'. I was as tight as a bowstring, my jaw clamped fast against any emotional break in the dam wall. I headed for the door. Arthur walked beside me. 'Oh Alan, you've forgotten your towel.'

  Well, that did it. He had called me by my name. At the sound of my name spoken in a lovely gentle non-threatening tone, I fell apart. Or, as it really happened, into his arms that folded around my thin shoulders. We stood like that, unperturbed by the rapping on the shop window until my chest stopped its convulsive gallop. Arthur released me and we resumed our former situation, me on the stool and Arthur once more in front of me.

  Looking into his plump, open face, I started to tell him what I could - no, what I thought he could take of my life. What good would it do for him to know of the streeturchin existence I had led and in fact was still living? He asked me about my father. He shook his head in amazement at the fool's chaotic marriage adventures, as I saw them first through a child's eyes and then as a conjoined victim of the most recent disaster. He wanted to know more and more, but two or three irate customers rattling the door put a stop to it. He let them in. One of them, a lady I knew from Angelo's fruit shop, whispered loud enough for me to hear, 'Isn't that poor Alva's boy?' Arthur answered tersely, 'Could be, Mrs Rothberg, now what can I show you?'

  He served them all with a brusque efficiency. The cash register rang out frequently and only then did I become aware that I still had my Commonwealth Bank moneybag dangling from my wrist with its contents of more than thirty quid, less the fifteen shillings I had paid for the towel, so I still had . . . well over twenty-nine pounds!

  In a brief interval before the next customer entered the shop, Arthur Symonds reminded me to call him Uncle Arthur. I nodded. Having established this, his tone changed. 'Now, sonny Jim, reckon you could make yourself useful around here?' Again I nodded, thought better of it and said, 'OK . . . Uncle Arthur.' He led me into the storeroom at the back. Without wasting words, he showed me how to open the cardboard boxes, take out their contents and put them onto the shelves around the room. Then he was gone and I set about the job with a willingness that surprised me.

  Uncle Arthur left me alone to work on until late afternoon. It was not hard work, sometimes interesting when there were items that in the past I might have wished for, but mostly just sorting stuff out and putting it on the racks of shelves. Now and then I made a mistake - they were the occasions when I thought of Trudy and felt a delicious flush go through my whole body. I did not know of any other sort of kiss than the one we had shared, a kiss of firm lips against each other's teeth. It came back to me again and again, and each time I was reduced to pressing my own lips to the back of my hand.

  'Girls' swim cossies go with girls' bathing caps, Alan, don't forget.' Arthur inspected my work. 'Not too bad, young'un, I think you can knock off now.' We went together back into the shop. Arthur pressed a key on the cash register, a drawer flew open and he took out a ten-shilling note. 'Here's your wages, Alan.' He picked up my moneybag and popped the note in it. 'Better than selling papers on the trams, eh?' Arthur began his routine for shutting the shop, putting dust covers on some items and then finally pressing a key on the giant four-drawer National cash register. I jumped as all four drawers sprang open at once. Arthur took a bank bag like mine and placed it on the counter. He then beckoned to me. 'OK, Alan, over here, mate. You should be good at this.' He piled all the money on the counter. 'Now, I want you to sort it out into pounds, shillings and pence.' I did not hesitate for one moment. Putting my own small moneybag to one side, I did as he wanted, accurately and neatly and earning a pat on the back.

  By now it was dusk; Uncle Arthur went around and switched off the lights. I picked up my bag, he picked up his much heavier bag and we headed for the front door. Uncle Arthur opened the door and I stepped out into darkening Bondi Road. 'Where are you off to, son?' I was still in my 'better clothes' and, for the first time, began to worry about my moneybag. The lending library would be closed and really, I did not want to take the money back there; there was no place 'at home' safe from Shirley or even my father. On top of all this new worry, I was bloody hungry! I started to tell Arthur that I would walk down Bondi Road and into Francis Street.

  'Home,' I answered. 'I've got to get up early to do my paper job.' It was then I remembered my towel. It was just as big a problem as the moneybag. I turned to go back into the shop; Arthur stopped me. 'Can't go back in there now, Alan, I've set the burglar alarm.' An unworthy momentary feeling of distrust gripped me then fell away. Arthur took my arm and steered me across the road. A tram ground to a halt in front of us and I made a move to jump on. Arthur's hand slipped from my arm to around my shoulders. The tram trundled on its way without me. We walked to a side street where a latemodel Ford stood at the kerb. He selected a key from a huge bunch, put it in the car's door-lock and the door swung open.

  'Well, poor Alva's boy,' Arthur began with a laugh, 'I've got a bonzer idea. I -that is we - Clara and me, we live in a house in Old South Head Road and right now she - Clara, my wife - is waiting with dinner for me. She always cooks enough for an army.' He went to go around to the driver's side of the car, paused and declared in a friendly but firm voice, 'You're coming home with me for tucker.' He propelled me unresisting to the front seat, leaned in through the window as the door closed. 'I forgot to ask you, Alan, do you eat kosher grub only at Francis Street?' And he roared with laughter. What am I in for, I asked myself, first the Don Bradman joke and now this one. I wouldn't know kosher if I were to trip over it - whatever the hell it was. And the sad truth was that I really did not know what kosher was. Some Jewboy, me! Thinking back, I might have known something of Jewish dietary laws if I had lived longer at Uncle Harry's but we never reached that level of discussing things Jewish, never got beyond the heroic Bible stories like David who slew Goliath with
the jawbone of an ass. Like kosher, I would not have known the jawbone of an ass if it jumped up and bit me on the bum.

  Arthur drove off in style, perhaps to show me he was master of this hunk of machinery, and I was impressed, but then how many motorcars had I ridden in? A smelly taxi with a Yank and . . . and sitting in the back seat of Harry Rosen's Buick with my hand resting ever so lightly on Gertie's chest. Seemed like years ago - until today, this very morning, when, with the blessing of the famous Don Bradman, we kissed once again.

  .... ....

  Uncle Arthur's house was situated on the low side of Old South Head Road. Only the gables were visible from the street. He nudged the car in low gear down a very steep driveway, switching off so that we halted with its door right opposite the entrance porch. One stride, a jangle of keys, an unnecessary push on the electric doorbell and only then did he come round to my side, sort of unloaded me and shepherded me to the front door. I tried to get behind Uncle Arthur, don't know why, it was a futile move anyway; he steered me down the entrance hall, booming out, 'Good Shabbes, Clara, look what I've found.'

  Was I lost? A parcel left in his Bondi Road shop? And it was Friday night. A nervous tremor gripped me, despite the gentle pressure Arthur exerted in the small of my back. I certainly felt lost at that moment. Here I was in a strange house, no brandnew beach towel, no idea what was to happen next . . .

  'I can't come, Arthur. Whatever it is, bring it here to me in the kitchen.'