by Denise Scott
My only consolation was in the evenings, when, as my mother sat under a standard lamp in her armchair, keeping warm by the heat bank (our newly installed modern heating device that was the size of a large dining table), doing her knitting, I sat at her feet, and the two of us had a cup of tea together in our white mugs with red apples painted on them. Night after night we did this. We didn’t talk much—certainly not a word was said about my heartache—but still I took great comfort in just being near her, the steady rhythm of her knitting needles a reassuring sound. I guess what I was feeling was loved.
* * *
A couple of weeks after Robbie dropped me there was a knock at the front door. It was Robbie and his best friend, Kenny. Robbie grinned. Oh, those dimples. ‘So, Scotty, what’s with the school uniform?’
Oh my Lord, I felt like such an idiot. It was Saturday. I made up some excuse about having to do a debate. I asked them if they wanted to come inside and wondered if it would be too obvious if I ran to the bathroom and quickly released my hair from its ponytail and put on some mascara.
‘No, Scotty, we can’t stay, but I just had to see ya, cos …’
He paused; my heart stopped beating.
‘… I wanted to see if ya …’
Oh, was he going to ask me out?
‘… wanna go out …’
YES. YES. YES. It was all I could do to stop myself from hugging him and screaming.
‘… with Kenny.’
With Kenny? It took a few seconds for the words to sink in.
‘Kenny wants to take ya to a party, don’t ya, Kenny? But he thought it would be weird to ask ya cos of him and me being best friends, but I wanted youse to know I’m absolutely cool with it.’
I looked at Kenny. He appeared to be about to vomit with anxiety. I said that I would go to the party with Kenny. I said this because Kenny looked so stricken with embarrassment.
And so Kenny and I went to the party and had an excruciatingly awkward night that both of us could not wait to be over. I never saw Kenny again.
For that matter, I never saw Robbie Buckle again, either.
chapter four
Kitchen sink surprise
As exciting and dramatic as the crazy rollercoaster ride of young love was, it was a casual conversation at the kitchen sink—a ‘Mum washing the dishes, me drying the dishes’ scenario—that really got my ‘anything out of the ordinary’ antennae quivering at that time. I was sixteen years old. I asked my mother what I thought was a simple question.
‘Who is that man?’
‘What man?’
‘That old man we go and see sometimes. You know, the one we call Pa Bock.’
‘What do you mean, who is he?’
‘I mean, why do we go and see him?’
‘He’s your grandfather.’
‘Is he?’
‘Who did you think he was?’
‘I don’t know. Just some old man we visited.’
I was floored by this news. What floored me even more, though, was the fact I had never bothered to ask my mother about her parents before this. It was so uncharacteristic. I was usually so curious, some might say nosey, especially about family, so why on earth had I never asked, ‘Mum, tell me about your mother? And who was your father?’ Indeed, here I was at sixteen completely ignorant about my mother’s parents. In hindsight it made me wonder if I hadn’t, on various occasions, asked my mother some questions about her past only to have her head me off at the pass.
Pa Bock was an old man our family used to visit once or twice a year at his home in Broadford, 90 kilometres north of Melbourne. He was tall, perfectly straight backed and very handsome, with deep-set pale-blue eyes and thick silver-grey hair. He always wore a clean, starched white shirt under a pair of bib-and-brace work overalls, and polished black lace-up leather work boots on his feet.
He’d never behaved like a grandfather or, for that matter, like a father—he’d shown no interest in us and certainly hadn’t ever displayed any love or affection towards my mother.
I recalled the one and only time I’d seen him outside his home: I was thirteen and we were gathered at St Mary’s, the Catholic church in Tatura. Mum’s beloved sister, May, had died suddenly of a heart attack. My mother had gone to Tatura as soon as she got the news. Dad, Julie and I had followed two days later and Mum, upon seeing us, had hugged me in a way I had never known before or since. She enveloped me and squeezed me so tightly that I felt awkward. Who was this emotional woman? Where had my mother gone? At May’s funeral I had been even more stunned to see my mother so overcome with grief that my father had to virtually carry her from the church.
Pa Bock had been there, as upright as ever, looking striking in a beautiful old-fashioned—1920s, perhaps?—three-piece grey suit that appeared never to have been worn. It featured a vest with a gold fob watch and chain attached. At the time, everyone had commented on how amazed they were to see Pa Bock there. That night, three years later, as I stood beside my mother at the kitchen sink, it occurred to me to wonder why it had been surprising to see Pa Bock at his own daughter’s funeral.
I sensed my mother was somewhat uncomfortable with this discussion, but nevertheless I pushed on with my questions. ‘So who is Aunty Peggy, then?’
‘Aunty Peggy is Pa Bock’s stepdaughter.’
‘What? Aunty Peggy is your stepsister?’
‘Well, yes.’
Holy Hannah! This was making less and less sense.
Aunty Peggy, as my sister and I called her, lived with Pa Bock. I’d always assumed that she was some sort of live-in housekeeper. She did all the cleaning, cooking, scrubbing and polishing. She waited on Pa Bock hand and foot. She was about sixty when this conversation with my mother was taking place. She had a strong Irish accent, short grey hair, never wore make-up and always dressed in a plain blouse and equally plain skirt that came to just below her knees. She wore black leather lace-up shoes and never wore stockings, only white ankle socks, or bare legs. She had olive skin, and her legs were smooth, naturally hairless (there was no way she would have indulged in anything as modern and vain as hair removal). Her legs were also shapely from her lifetime habit of riding a pushbike, her only means of transport. Neither she nor Pa Bock could drive a car. There was a good-as-new gig that sat in the back shed, but, since Pa Bock had given up keeping horses long before, it was of little use.
Pa Bock and Aunty Peggy lived in a humble weatherboard house. There were tall pine trees that bordered both sides and meant the sun rarely shone through the windows. Inside, it appeared that time had quite literally stopped somewhere in the 1920s. In the hallway was the original wooden-box wall phone with a crank handle you wound around and around to be connected to the operator; it was their only means of connection to the outside world, not that they connected to it very often. The original wood-fire cooker remained in the kitchen along with a Baltic pine table and matching chairs with kangaroos carved across their backs. There was a formal dining room, where we never sat. Occasionally, I’d sneak in there to admire the elegant dinner gong that sat on an oak sideboard. Unable to control myself, I once struck that gong, an incident that caused Aunty Peggy to come running. ‘What on earth? You can’t be touchin’ that, now. We never use it, except on Christmas Day.’ This immediately led me to wonder who on earth would ever have been there to hear it.
In the front of the house was the ‘visitors room’, where the original 1920s floral lounge suite sat in all its pristine glory, no doubt never having been sat upon. We were certainly never invited into that room; we were always escorted to the lean-to veranda at the back of the house, where the original Coolgardie safe was, the only means of refrigeration. One of Peggy’s many jobs was to fill the tray at the top with ice, which then slowly melted, dripping down its sides of hessian cloth.
So disconnected from the outside world was Peggy that in 1970 she asked me, ‘What the devil are you talking about? Pantihose? What are they?’ And when she clapped eyes upon our first ever family car (as op
posed to Dad’s work van), a 1962 EK Holden, she almost fainted in awestruck wonder. This may have been appropriate if it had been 1962, but it was 1971, and my dad had bought the car second-hand.
Whenever we visited, rain, hail or shine, we sat in old wicker chairs on the back veranda, which thankfully was enclosed. My dad would put the long-necks of beer he’d brought with him in the Coolgardie. Dad always made sure Peggy got a shandy. He knew the drill. Pa Bock didn’t approve of Peggy having beer, so my father would smuggle it to her in the kitchen, where she would keep it out of sight, hidden behind the sugar canister, in case Pa Bock made a sudden appearance.
My mother would always take food to make a meal for everyone. While my mum cooked, Peggy would hover about the kitchen, forever fearful that something might go awry. Tragically, the day arrived when a catastrophe of such horror took place that it became the stuff of legend, forever after talked about at family gatherings—most often referred to as ‘the day the custard caught.’ For those not familiar with the art of custard making, the custard needs to be constantly monitored while simmering on a low heat. How the custard came to be left unattended on that day no-one ever knew, but my mother and Peggy returned to the kitchen to find the burntblack saucepan smoking on the stove. So scared was Aunty Peggy of Pa Bock’s reaction that she grabbed the pot off the stove, holding it with her apron so as not to burn her hands, took off out the front door at great speed and ran for her life down the street in a crazed, blind panic, eventually hurling the pot behind a bush in a distant vacant block. Showing uncharacteristic feistiness and courage, my mother marched out to the lean-to, squared up to Pa Bock and announced, ‘I’ve just burnt one of your saucepans. I’ll buy you a new one tomorrow and post it to you.’ And with that she about-faced and returned to the kitchen.
Later that afternoon, on the way home, Mum said, ‘Poor Peggy. What a shitful life she must have.’ For my mother to swear indicated that Peggy’s life must indeed have been very shitful.
I continued my interrogation while Mum continued to wash dishes. ‘So who was your mother?’
My mum muttered that her mother was Pa Bock’s wife, but she didn’t say her name.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died when I was two.’
‘How?’
‘I’m not sure; no-one ever spoke about it.’
‘Then who was Peggy’s mum?’
‘Her name was Bridie. Pa Bock married her not long after Ma Bock died.’
‘So what was Bridie like?’
‘Not very nice—to me, anyway.’
* * *
A year after the kitchen sink surprise, when I was seventeen, Pa Bock passed away, at ninety-two years of age. Aunty Peggy, the sole inheritor of the house, sold it and all the contents at auction. My mother and I went along, more out of curiosity than to buy anything. All the locals had turned out, and there were more than a few excited bargain hunters salivating at the prospect of picking up antiques in mint condition. I was mindlessly looking through a cardboard box of ‘sundries’—old cutlery, some Vegemite jars, screws and bolts—when I came across a delicate pale-green glass carafe and matching water glass decorated with hand-painted flowers. It was love at first sight. I wanted it. I showed it to my mother.
‘Oh, for goodness sake. I gave that to Peggy for a present years ago—must have been before the war.’
‘Can we buy it, Mum? Please? It’s beautiful.’
My mother looked decidedly unimpressed. ‘Fancy putting that up for auction. It’s not as if it’s worth anything. I hardly want to pay for something again that I gave someone as a gift. How ridiculous.’
After the auction Peggy disappeared, never to be seen again. Rumour had it she returned to Ireland. The carafe and water glass took pride of place on the dressing table next to my bed.
chapter five
Leaving the nest
When I left school I headed off to Melbourne State College to do a teaching diploma. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t want to be a teacher. I wanted to be an actress, the dream having stayed with me ever since that night I first saw Joyce Grenfell. Not having any idea how one went about pursuing fame, however, I chose to do a teaching course, specifically, a drama-teaching course. Just that word, drama, was enough to get me into a dizzy state of excitement.
In my first year we literally ran around the place dressed in black leotards and tights, feeling the space, feeling the walls and frequently feeling one another. I also studied music, and even though I couldn’t play an instrument or read music I managed to get A-plus for a performance of my composition that included a boiling kettle and a choir gargling water. At one point there was a pause in proceedings to allow the audience to listen to the sound of ice melting. Oh, how the music teachers gasped with the originality of it all.
By the end of my first year I was still living at home and consequently still a virgin. As it was during the hippie era this was an extremely embarrassing situation to find myself in. Whenever I got together with girlfriends in the college canteen or the pub and they valiantly tried to recall the names of all the guys they’d slept with I would appear to vague out, staring off into the middle distance, desperate to give the impression I had the same problem—too many lovers, not enough memory. Crazy times!
Being a full-on practising Catholic who still went to church and communion every Sunday didn’t exactly sit easily with the free-love, free-spirit, free-thinking hippie scene, either. Not only was it uncool but I’d begun to have serious big-time doubts about Catholicism—many aspects of which now seemed entirely bonkers to me: the Pope’s decree that sex before marriage and using contraception were mortal sins, right up there with murder, for instance. What on earth was that about? Who did the Pope think he was? Sure, he was The Pope, but so what? How dare he tell me that if I had sex (not that I had) and used the pill (not that I did) I’d go to hell. How positively insane! (As a Maltese woman declared ten years later, as we lay in neighbouring beds in the Queen Victoria Hospital maternity ward, after having just given birth: ‘The day the Pope has my babies for me will be the day I listen to what he has to say about contraception.’ Hear, hear sister!)
It also seemed completely bonkers that I was continuing to stick by a religion that my mother had chosen for me but didn’t see fit to follow herself. If it wasn’t good enough for her then why should it be good enough for me?
But then again the fact was that for so many years I’d been such a big fan of Jesus, loved Him like crazy, so that at one stage I’d even contemplated marriage to Him … not that He’d ever proposed. And there was all the incense burning, and the stained-glass windows featuring images of freshly speared lambs and decapitated heads sitting on serving platters. And, of course, the relatively new ritual of singing folk hymns, the upbeat and jaunty ‘Sons of God’, being one of my faves.
Since the age of four I’d gone to mass every Sunday, taken communion every week and made regular visits to the confessional—the old ‘thinking bad thoughts’ being my most consistent sin. How could I just walk away from something that had been so fundamental in shaping my life? The fact was I couldn’t do it: I simply didn’t have the guts and feared I never would.
* * *
At the end of my first year at teachers college I went travelling through New Zealand with my old school friends Anne and Jacinta. We might as well have had neon signs above our heads flashing, ‘We are impressionable young women in the process of trying to let go of our Catholic faith and are therefore suckers for anyone offering an alternative.’
Cue the Pentecostals!
We were in a small coastal village on the South Island when we came across an extremely daggy conservative woman playing her guitar and singing songs in praise of the Lord. A fellow traveller, a young guy who was completely strapped for cash, asked if he could borrow her guitar so he could busk.
She replied that she would happily lend him her instrument, on the condition that he only played songs for Jesus.
He replied h
e couldn’t do that because he didn’t ‘fucking know any.’
She explained that she didn’t think music should be used for any other purpose.
That was when I waded in to the debate. Surely music was about being happy and joyful? And surely Jesus would want her to lend her guitar to this young man rather than see him starve to death?
No, she was adamant. Her instrument was only to be used to praise God.
One thing led to another, and the next minute she declared that I was clearly being called by Jesus to join her church. She said that it was the Lord who had brought me to that tiny village in New Zealand. (Weird. I could have sworn it was the chap we’d hitched a lift with.)
Later that night, New Year’s Eve 1973 to be precise, while our fellow youth hostellers got drunk and partied on the beach, we were at a Pentecostal meeting in a small wooden hall, waiting to receive the gift of speaking in tongues. At one point, much to Anne and Jacinta’s astonishment, I actually began speaking fluent gibberish. But, as I later explained, this was nothing to do with Jesus; rather, it was a drama game we used to play frequently at college.
The girl with the guitar said I was ‘fighting The Call,’ and so the next evening we found ourselves inside the Pentecostal crusading tent. I was wired, full of nervous anticipation. Was I really about to become a Pentecostal and only listen to songs for Jesus? How could I possibly go through life without Mick Jagger’s Sticky Fingers or Neil Young’s ‘Heart of gold’, not to mention Melanie’s ‘Rollerskate song’? And yet there I was. Why? It was obvious I was being called by some higher power; there could be no other explanation. It was meant to be. It was my destiny.
There was a long table with church leaders sitting on one side while Anne, Jacinta and I sat opposite them. There was candlelight and the mood was solemn as they spoke of their faith and the importance of the Holy Spirit.