by Steve Bisley
Why do all sepia photographs appear so sad, dull and lifeless? What happened to the fun?
There’s another tortured photo beside my grandfather’s. It’s my father as a child. He has the same sullen look as his own father. Just a sad little boy in a bad suit. No wonder my grandmother can’t remember anything. Who’d want to?
I go further into the house in search of the love, of something soft, a hint of something from the heart. There is the smell of old in every room, like watery cabbage. A bedroom. Cut crystal jars on the dressing table, wispy hairs trail from a silver brush, an ivory-topped cane leans against a dark-panelled dresser.
In my grandfather’s study, solemn books, grim and heavy, line the walls. Ode to a Country Churchyard and more odes and weary sonnets. This whole place, a shrine to the miserable. A roll-top desk darkens a quiet corner. He’s been gone for years but it feels like he’s never left. His cold pipe lies half packed beside his heavy leather armchair. Did he ever run around naked in the house with Christmas tinsel tied around his balls? Did he and my grandmother lie naked in bed on a Sunday, send my dad to the pictures and fuck till lunchtime? Did he ever cuddle my father and wrestle him to the floor and tickle him till he wet his pants? Did he build things with him, have adventures, tell him about girls, kiss him and tell him that he loved him so much it hurt? A pig flies past the window.
I slope back to the joys of the kitchen.
Four things in the pantry, three things in the fridge. Nan asleep in a chair as the others busy themselves around her. Her life in a small suitcase. I escape the house for light and air.
Dad’s coming now and Nan’s inching along on two canes past the For Sale sign to the waiting car. St Vinnies are coming tomorrow to empty her life into boxes and sell them, cut price, to strangers. Mum folds Nan neatly into the back seat. I slide in beside her.
‘Do you know my father?’ she asks.
‘No, Nan,’ I reply.
‘He was very difficult at times.’
We turn out of Nan’s street for the last time.
I know what she means.
It’s going around.
I got my room back after only a few months. Nan’s confusion grew to the point where it just became too hard to manage and she had to go into care.
It was such a shame.
I really miss the eggs.
My mother’s mum was a different kettle of fish altogether. Jessica, my maternal grandmother, had been a ‘tweeny’, a between-stairs maid, in a large house in Shepherd’s Bush in London in the early 1900s. She had worked upstairs in the main living area of the house, serving at table, making beds and cleaning, as well as downstairs in the kitchen as needed.
She met my grandfather, who was the local coal man, at the back door of the big house. They fell in love and soon after immigrated to Australia, Jessie pregnant with my mother. Jessie told stories of the First World War and had sharp recollections of the bombing of London, of food rationing and small coffins being taken away from her parents’ house after several of her siblings had died of illnesses like diphtheria and influenza. She had a rich cockney accent and a mad sense of humour. She drank a single glass of OP rum diluted with a little water every day.
Some of my mother’s brothers and sisters built their houses on vacant land right next to Gran’s, just to be near her. She was the centre of all our lives and, although we lived a long way from Sydney, we always knew Gran was there for each and every one of us.
Visitors
I’m swinging on the big wire gate at the entrance to our farm. I open the gate as far as it will go. I take a few paces back and run like mad and jump on. This sends the gate hurtling towards the big fence post. If you’re not holding on really tightly, it will buck you off when it smashes into the post.
This is what I do when I’m waiting for visitors to arrive.
My cousin Wocky is coming up from Sydney with his parents and I hope he gets here soon ’cause my hands have blisters on them now from swinging on this bloody gate. Usually I only swear when I’m by myself. It’s safer that way. Sometimes I say ‘shit’ and ‘bloody’ together, like this: ‘Shit, I think I’ll have another ride on this bloody gate while I’m waiting for my bloody cousin to arrive!’
I swear at Dukey the dog all the time, and I can tell he really likes it. ‘Come here, you pooftah,’ I say and he wags his tail like mad. He doesn’t know what it means and neither do I but it sounds great.
All swear words sound great!
Fuck sounds the best.
Do you want to know what happened when I first said it?
We were having dinner and I said to my brother, ‘Pass the fucking butter, please.’ My friend Wayney Brooks had told me at school that day that you could say ‘fuck’ if you were asking for something. Sounded pretty good to me so that’s why I gave it a go.
Things got really quiet, really quickly. Richard nearly choked on a mouthful of food; he went bright red and wouldn’t look up from his plate. Kris dropped her knife and fork with a clatter, Mum put her hand to her mouth and it seemed like she was laughing behind it and Dad looked like he’d seen a ghost.
After things settled down and were back to normal it was my mother who remained at the table after everyone had hurriedly left. When she had composed herself, Mum warned me that if she heard me use that word again she would wash my mouth out with soap.
Fuck! I thought. Fuck!
I hear the sound of a car coming; it has to be them ’cause hardly anyone ever comes down our road. My brother says that the reason nobody comes is because we live in the arsehole of the world. There’s another beauty!
I have a final swing on the fucking arsehole of a gate, crashing into the post as their car comes into view. ‘Visitors!’ I yell towards the house, and by the time they’re through the gate we’re all there to meet them.
The parents all head into the house for tea, but I’ve got something special to show Wocky because he’s from the city and doesn’t know much about the bush.
I take him around the shed and through the gate to the paddocks below.
We have three horses: Tiger, a piebald stallion; Bootsy, a short fat pony; and Honey, our brood mare. We ride them all, but Honey doesn’t like to be ridden and always tries to bite you on the fucking arse when you’re least expecting it.
Today, though, Honey is going to have a foal. We always know when a foal is going to be born because Tiger gets really excited and charges around the paddock like a mad thing. He’s been doing it all morning.
I tell Wocky all this as we climb to the top rail of the fence. Honey is standing really still. She’s not very far away from us. Her body is stiff and her back legs are trembling. I call her but she doesn’t come. I know what’s about to happen, I’ve seen it before, but Wocky is in for a surprise.
Tiger rears high on his back legs and races the length of the paddock, bucking and twisting. Honey stands steady, unmoving. Her back legs are bending now and the muscles through her sides are rippling with the contractions. Sweat glistens on her flanks. Suddenly blood gushes from her rear and a small head appears, and in an instant the foal falls gently to the soft clover, wet from the birth.
Bang!
Wocky’s head moves sideways about a foot when the blow hits him. It’s his father! He hauls Wocky from the fence and tells him it’s disgraceful that he’s been watching and he’s to go and wait in the house till they’re ready to leave. Then he turns on me – I should be ashamed that I let Warren see something like that, he says.
I don’t understand. Getting a flogging for watching a foal being born? I wait on the fence, alone. I look at the new foal lying wet in the grass and Honey nuzzling her gently and I’m glad I live here, on my farm in the bush.
I’d rather a paddock full of horses than a room full of people any fucking day.
Scissors
We never see it coming, never, until it’s too late.
I’m in the willow tree with Kris. It’s in a corner of our yard, not far from the hou
se but far enough for secrets. It’s Kris’s favourite tree. We’ve built cubbies all through the bush, but right here is her special place.
I know why she likes it. There is a softness to this tree, a gentleness that she needs. Its branches are smooth and its leaves cascade in a light green shower that trails the ground.
On other days she’s good in a tree. She moves easily and hugs the main trunk as she climbs. Today is different, and wrong. She’s carrying a pair of long scissors tucked into the waistband of her shorts.
She wants to climb to the very top of her favourite tree and fall to the ground so that the scissors will split her guts open and she will die.
I wonder what her guts will look like after the fall. Will the scissors still be sticking out or will they be pushed right inside her guts from the impact? The willow shudders as she nears the top.
I wonder if she will die right away or if she will be talking to me for a while before she dies. I wait in the lower branches and think about life without her.
I know why she’s up there.
We both got a belting an hour ago.
We’d been fighting instead of doing a job we’d been given.
Push-and-shove stuff, it’s never serious.
We were told to each go and pick a stick from the bush and take it to the shed and wait.
Always the waiting. Waiting for what is coming, hoping for the reprieve that never comes. We are both in the cool dimness of the shed, not looking at each other now, waiting, caught.
Waiting for the sound of his feet on the gravel outside. His shoes shifting the sharp stones as he walks towards us. But not till the waiting is done, till it’s been enough time, does he come.
My eyes dart around the shed.
My heart is loud in my ears.
There is nothing soft in here.
Hard things line the walls.
Crowbars, pickaxes, loops of wire, hammers, saws with razor-sharp teeth, pliers. On the workbench are two vices with their jaws cranked wide open.
Light from empty nail holes in the roof cut the gloom in shafts. My sister’s eyes never leave the floor, but her body twists in defiance. She knows she is now too old for this, too smart. She knows that what is coming won’t make her understand anything she doesn’t already know.
Our sticks of choice are in our hands.
We have chosen carefully.
Too thin means they’ll break too early and the fury will continue with a belt or worse.
Too thick and the welts will be raw and deep.
There is a crunch outside and then another, measured and quickening.
My eyes go to my sister; her legs are buckling in preparation for the blows, her stout stick is quivering in her hand.
Then he is at the door.
Then inside with us.
His face is ruddy, white spittle blisters his lips and he is shaking and furious. He wrenches the stick from my sister’s hand and cuts a great whistling arc with it. Again and again the stick flails against her till she is screaming and pleading. ‘I’ll be good, Dad!’ she cries, and, ‘No, Dad, no! Please, no!’
Now his rhythm is set and the blows come harder and harder till I’m crying for her and yelling too. ‘Please stop, Dad! No, Dad, please – it’s my fault!’
Our voices mix and the blows come faster and the spittle flies and he flings the first stick away and now he’s into me. The stick breaks and he is punching me with his fists and now he pulls a handful of hair from my head as a fist splits my bottom lip open. I see Kris on the floor, great welts on the backs of her legs, and her face is set like something wild.
Then Mum is there in the doorway, screaming, ‘Stop, Bruce, stop! Please God, stop!’
Then he is gone.
And he has broken us.
Again.
We sit in the willow till the dark comes.
Shops
There was a post office run by Mr and Mrs O’Connor. They were as old as dirt. They had the grey skin that only old people had. Grey skin with blotchy brown liver spots everywhere. Long saggy faces with glasses perched on the end of their noses. They had old mangy dogs that stunk. There was no mail delivery so people had to collect their letters from the post office. Nobody stayed to chat because of those stinking dogs. The smell of the dogs was on everything. On the front counter were tall glass jars with lollies in them, and if you were crazy enough to buy any, then one of the old O’Connors would thrust a dog-smelly hand into the jar and claw out your selection. It just wasn’t worth it.
The post office was also the telephone exchange. Our telephone number was Lake Munmorah 2. To make a telephone call you turned a handle on a box that was attached to the telephone. This caused a bell to ring at the post office. One of the old O’Connors would plug a cord into a hole and say, ‘Hello?’ You would then ask for the number you wanted. If I wanted to call my cousin I would ask for Lake Munmorah 4. They would then plug a cord into a hole marked 4 and turn another handle and my cousin’s phone would ring. When you had finished your call you would say goodbye to the O’Connors because they were always listening in.
If you wanted to call a number in Sydney it could take up to an hour to connect.
There were no shops, so things got delivered. There was the Watkins man. He came in a large van. It was stocked with all the things that women needed to run a lovely house. There was hand soap for the bathroom and laundry soap that was chunky and yellow and harsh. There was Solvol, a grey, gritty soap used for getting stubborn stains out of anything. There were blue bags – small muslin bags with strong blue detergent inside that women would use in the copper. The copper was a large round container set inside a brickwork outer casing with a firebox underneath. The copper was filled with water and the fire beneath was lit, causing the water inside to boil furiously. The blue bag was cast into the boiling water and the clothes were then added and the whole thing was stirred with a large bleached stick. After the clothes had been exposed to this treatment for sufficient time they were hauled out and put through a medieval device aptly named ‘the mangle’, which squeezed every last drop of water from them. This procedure was used for whites and bed linen and the like, and I have never lain on sheets that were cleaner than those that had been put through the copper-and-mangle routine.
The Watkins man also sold towels, sheets, tea towels and cutlery. He wore a grey dustcoat and his hair was greased back with fine comb lines running through it from front to back. I always thought the Watkins man was a bit suss, and stayed close to Mum when he called, because my brother told me the Watkins man was always ‘givin’ women one’ behind his van. I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t want it to happen to Mum.
I used to hang out for the baker to arrive. He was my favourite visitor.
He came once a week and would open a flap on the side of his truck and prop it up with a stick he carried. Inside were shelves lined with all sorts of bread and cakes. Cream horns, apple turnovers, horseshoes, vanilla slices, lamingtons, apple pies, custard tarts and the smell of warm bread. Sometimes he’d give us kids a loaf for nix and we’d pull out the doughy centre and fill the hole with butter and Vegemite.
The Carters’ big house
Janice and Helen!
The Carter girls next door had a real cubby house. Not like the ones that we threw together in the bush; a couple of rough poles leant against a tree covered in leafy branches. Theirs was a real one. It had fibro walls, with sliding windows and a real door. It had an iron roof with a pretend chimney on it. It was painted in girly colours, like pink and green. Inside was a kitchen with a stove that didn’t work and a wooden fridge.
Best of all there were two bunks, real beds you could sleep in or just lie on, mucking around. We used to play all sorts of games in the cubby. When we were young, it was just pots and pans, and making cakes out of sand and water, and dressing up in adult clothes and pretending to be Mum or Dad.
Later we’d play Spin the Bottle, and you’d have to kiss whoever it landed on. I l
oved kissing and used to practise with my cousin Linda, who lived across the creek.
Sometimes I’d have to be the doctor and Janice and Helen would be the patients. I’d knock on the door and someone would call, ‘Come in.’
There’d be giggling from the bunks. I’d go in with my bag of stick-like instruments. The treatment was always the same and usually had something to do with their panties.
The Carters had the first TV in the area because they were rich. Everyone in the district was invited to come and watch Bonanza on Friday night. People came from everywhere, swinging their lanterns along bush tracks to see the wonder of this thing called TV. It was black and white and beautiful. It was like having the movies in your house whenever you wanted to watch them. It was like a genie had come out of a box. The magic of television held us from the first moment we saw it, and it would never let us go.
So there we’d be, a dozen kids on the carpet with the adults behind us on chairs with cups of tea, watching our future in black and white. Later they got a special bit of plastic that you stuck to the front of the TV. It was meant to turn a black and white picture into colour. The top of the plastic was blue, for the sky. The middle bit was pink, for skin tones. The bottom strip was green to match the colour of grass. Yep, that was the first colour TV. It sort of worked, if the picture on the screen was of someone standing outside on the grass under the sky, but mostly it was just plain weird.
We still didn’t have the power on.
We had a radio, powered by big Eveready batteries covered in a sort of waxy paper to stop the acid leaking out of them. Every evening at five o’clock, no matter where you were, you’d belt home in time for The Children’s Hour on the ABC. You could become an Argonaut, sailing the seas in search of the Golden Fleece. As an Argonaut you were given your own special number and, if you wrote into the show and answered a quiz question correctly, they would read out your name and number for everyone who was listening to hear.