Once a cyclone peeled the roof off Mrs Scott’s house and sheets of corrugated iron flew under our house, which was frightening because Mum had tied us children to posts under the house in case our house was blown away.
In the house above ours lived old Mrs Sullivan and her assorted lodgers.
From our front gate we could see the grand presbytery which had replaced our little cottages, and although the houses were nestled among large overhanging mango trees, the priests could see our front door from their verandah.
We almost always had someone living with us during our early childhood as renting out rooms was a good way for Mum to increase the household income. With three children to feed and clothe, and a veritable fortune which had to be spent on me for medicines, vitamin supplements and anything else Mum heard or read might help me, she had to watch every penny.
The lodgers were all white and most were women, sometimes with a child or children of their own. The upside of having them stay was that Mum could occasionally ask them to keep an eye on us while she took care of her business. For her, I’m sure the downsides were many, but for us, it was mainly that we had to sleep in a crude shelter under the highset part of the house. Even Mum spent periods living in this room when opportunity arose and she was short of cash. We had to play quietly so as not to disturb her lodgers, whom she called ‘boarders’, whether they were in on the basis of room and meals or not.
At that time, up to ten years or so after the war, many people arrived in Townsville without anywhere to live. Some European refugees with little money would go along the streets in the centre of town, which was near where we lived, knocking on doors and asking to rent a room or pleading for a little food, or some work in exchange for food. A trickle of these people made their way up the Stanley Street hill and a few left the main road and came into our dip.
Old Mrs Sullivan, who we children thought was a hundred years old already when we were born, always had a house full of boarders, and her place was a well-known address for transients. A few times when she had a room vacant, she had Mum put a small advertisement in the Townsville Daily Bulletin for her. She only took ‘clean single men’, or so her ad stated, but the lodger who was with her longest was by no means clean. Bert Love, who received some sort of pension, sat on her front verandah almost from daylight to dusk, wearing dark trousers and a grey singlet stretched over his pot belly. Mrs Sullivan was very proud of Bert because he didn’t drink, but he had other obnoxious habits. He’d cough and hawk up phlegm, which he spat over the side of the verandah or out through his bedroom window until the tracks—along with the tea-leaves that he emptied from his teapot—had stained the house. Mrs Sullivan was too blind to see the stains, and by the time I was six, almost too frail to walk around her own house at all.
Bert often volunteered to watch us if Mum had to rush into town for some business. She was paying off the house in instalments at the bank, whenever she got a few shillings from her laundry work, and there were bills from the gas company and, eventually, the electricity company, so she often had errands to do. When Bert was to look after us, she’d tell us to play in our front yard where he could see us, but not to go over to his house. No sooner was she out of sight than Bert would call out that he had lollies for us, and to come and get them. He would rub his hands over us, always touching us on our arms or backs, and he’d offer to teach us to play cards. First he taught us to play snap, but later he’d ask us if we wanted to learn to play ‘strip poker’.
Mum used to question us closely about him, and threaten to belt him over the head with her iron frying pan if he ‘ever says so much as a word out of place’, but we didn’t know what was out of place and what wasn’t. As he had often given us a penny or a ha’penny each to say we hadn’t even gone into their yard, we weren’t able to tell Mum about his groping ways without admitting we’d gone beyond our own fence and thereby risk a thrashing.
Mrs Sullivan had three rooms to rent and, besides Bert, the other lodgers turned over several times. They were the quiet, elderly gentlemen she sought. Mum’s boarders during those early years included Mrs Mayers, whom we called Maisie, and her husband, Fred, who stayed a long time and had amicable relationships with everyone in our family. Fred was thin as a stick while Maisie was very obese. She was unable to have children and she lavished all her affection upon us. Also, Maisie was the only person who gave me and Dellie a clue about menstruation.
We also took in a series of refugees from Europe, including children, all of whom spoke English poorly or not at all and arrived at our house late in the evening and desperate for shelter, and several single mothers with a child or children. Most stayed a few weeks until they organised themselves, and because they were often broke when they arrived, Mum fed them until they got on their feet. She also gave advice about where to look for work, depending on their skills, and sometimes I had to look after their children while they sought to establish themselves. This was difficult because the children weren’t used to obeying me as my sisters were, and those who didn’t speak English would often cry until their mother or father returned because they were afraid they had been abandoned. Mum encouraged us to feel sorry for these children and to help them in any way we could.
Within three blocks of our house was St Anne’s Church of England school. We walked by it many times as we passed on our way to town. We couldn’t see into the main schoolyard as it had a high fence and tall buildings, but tucked into one corner was a hall, and on some afternoons we’d see girls inside playing, exercising and vaulting, and occasionally singing.
The area consisted of hills and dales, and the hall stood on much lower ground than the footpath which ran alongside it. We’d squat down to peek in to see the girls through the tiny gaps between the open flaps. The hall didn’t have windows, just flaps, common at the time, made of timber and propped open with sticks to allow in air and light when the building was in use.
One day Mum said the school was having an open day. Prospective kindergarteners were invited to spend half a day there, prior to starting at the beginning of the following year. She dressed me up and marched me down to the school but from the minute she left me there, I knew I wasn’t going to be welcome.
As I wasn’t an enrolled student, and this was only to be a ‘test run’, Mum hadn’t gone to the expense of buying me a uniform. I was unaware that there was such a thing as a uniform until that day. Vicious little girls circled me, pulling at the pretty frock Mum had insisted I wear in order to impress the school with my worthiness, and taunting me. I was so taken by all the new things I was seeing, in the schoolyard, the playing courts and the classroom buildings, that I didn’t take too much notice of their meanness.
Sometime that morning, we were brought into the hall, and I was excited at seeing it from the inside. The regular pupils knew what they were to do, and soon, under the teacher’s eye, had built up a structure of steps and stairs made of forms and positioned themselves in rows. The teacher told us new girls to fit ourselves into the formation. The little white girls were quickly pulled up into the lines, and I was left walking up and down the rows, trying to find a space for myself anywhere, while the teacher moved her papers and song books around on her stand out the front.
I went to all the lines along one side, but could find no room. The girls were shuffling around to fill up the gaps and not let me in. The structure was close to the wall but not tight against it, so I decided I’d cross behind it and go along the lines on the other side. As I did so, two girls began kicking me around the head and shoulders. When I looked up I saw that they weren’t looking down at me, their heads were facing straight in front so that the teacher wouldn’t know what they were doing.
I put my arms up around my head to protect myself, and I noticed that the girls kicking out at me were holding onto other girls in order to keep their balance. I slid past them, but behind the lines it was dark and I felt hot, terribly hot, and my perspiration and tears were making the top of my dress wet. As I co
ntinued along a third girl struck her foot out at me and hissed, ‘Get away.’ The wooden forms they were standing on rocked when she moved so suddenly and viciously.
I could see daylight at the end of the formation and I stumbled on towards it. The girls tensed and I sensed the teacher coming towards the back. One girl said, ‘Don’t telltale, darkie.’
The teacher’s voice came clearly. ‘Who said that?’
There was no reply. The teacher reached the end of the row and peered towards me. She reached in and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me clear of the desks and the wall. Everyone had turned and was watching me.
I’d like to think the teacher just didn’t know what was going on, that she was busy with her work and failed to notice the increasing skittishness of the group of girls as they realised that by shuffling around they could keep me out and torment me.
After a moment of excruciating embarrassment and agony, which stands out in my memory of this event, the teacher hoisted me up by the arm and toted me outside. She carried me at arm’s length away from herself to a tap in the playground where she put my head under the cold running water several times, and between each dumping I was drawn up, spluttering and coughing all over myself.
Sufficiently wet to please her, she pulled the skirt of my pretty frock up to wipe my face dry with it. Another teacher came towards us and asked if anything was the matter. She was told that I was having a turn from the heat, and asked to look in on my teacher’s class until she got me ‘settled down’.
Eventually, I was left sitting alone on a low bench that was nailed around the bottom of the thick trunk of a tree, with my new little school port beside me, watching the dappled sunlight as it played between the leaves, making interesting patterns of light and shadow, keeping my mind blank and waiting for my mother. After a long wait, Mum appeared around the corner of a building across the schoolyard just as the girls were filing out of the hall. I picked up my port and walked towards her, ignoring the girls, and when I came up level with her I put my hand in hers to pull her out of there as fast as I could. The teacher ran over, calling, ‘Mrs Patterson, Mrs Patterson,’ and when Mum stopped, she was told, ‘Your daughter had a turn from the heat.’
I already knew this was not the sort of thing I could tell my mother about. At other times, people had called me and my sisters names in the street when she was with us and Mum had just said, ‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ and dismissed the incidents. On a much earlier occasion, after a similar occurrence, I had asked Mum, ‘What’s a “nigger”?’ She was powdering her face and paused but didn’t answer. So I pressed on. ‘Well, what’s a “black gin”?’
‘Where did you hear that?’ she reluctantly replied, her lips pursed tensely. I could sense that she had become angry because I hadn’t backed off when she didn’t answer my first question, so I ran away.
Later that day she told me, not for the first time and probably by way of explanation, ‘When people say rude things to you, just remember you’re as good as anyone else.’ I recall thinking then that I’d seen some ugly people in town, drunks rolling around in the streets and the like, and it hurt me to hear her say [wasn’t any better than these people—which was probably a very negative reaction to what she thought was good advice. ‘As good as anyone else’ was one of Mum’s stock phrases in the peptalks she gave us about racism, and every time I heard it, it grated on me. It always seemed to me that she was putting me on the same level as racists themselves.
Although I didn’t bother her with the details of what went on during my Open day’ at St Anne’s, I let her know I would not be happy to go to there, even though it was the closest school. Mum tried to terrify me by telling me stories about what sort of things might happen to me if I went to the state school, but I already knew what sort of things happened at St Anne’s.
Not long afterwards, we had a visit from a priest from across the street. He was a small man with a kindly, moon-shaped face, called Father Gard. We were having our nap when he knocked on the door and Mum made me put a dress on over my bloomers and singlet as soon as she saw who it was. Then she and I dragged kitchen chairs out onto the front verandah so they could sit there in full view of everyone to have their conversation.
I had to look after the two littlies while they talked, so I don’t know what was said. He called back several times over the next few weeks, and each time they sat on kitchen chairs on the verandah. The initial visits were very quiet, but after a while Mum began to like him and we could hear the occasional hoot of laughter from where we were playing under the house.
Each year, Mum’s sister, Aunty Glad, travelled through Townsville on her way to Cairns by train to visit their mother and, when she’d died, other family members. On the return trip she shared the latest gossip with Mum. On one such stopover I overheard Mum telling her about Father Card’s visits.
Father Gard had said to Mum that he’d seen her around with her three girls and the oldest one must be getting near school age. He’d then said it would be a shame if we didn’t get a proper education. When Mum agreed he put it to her that if we were to become Catholics, the nuns at the Catholic school would take us in if he asked them.
I don’t know if Mum already had a religion, but up until then she’d shown a particular dislike for Catholics. I had picked this up from comments she made on Sundays when, as she said, ‘the Saturday night sinners roll up to the church to ask forgiveness and to impress their wives and little kiddies’.
But Father Gard, she told Aunty Glad, had worn her down. He’d spoken to the kindergarten teacher, Sister Teresa, and the head teacher at the primary school, Sister de Salles, and they had been enthusiastic, waiving fees and promising to help Mum keep us in uniforms.
Aunty Glad was scathing, also being not fond of Catholics. ‘So you’ve sold them off to the Catholics, for a few pennies and some second-hand clothes,’ she responded. But she was laughing when she said it, so I figured it couldn’t be too bad—and I was deeply relieved to know that I’d not have to set foot into St Anne’s again.
Aunty Glad assumed the role of our chief disciplinarian. She was a fearful figure and her annual visits were anticipated with dread by my sisters and I. Throughout the year, whenever we did anything naughty, Mum threatened us with Aunty Glad. Then Aunty Glad would arrive and, even though she’d only be at our house for a day or so at a time, she’d dispense doses of castor oil to whoever had been playing up. Holding us down on the floor or bed, kneeling on our flailing limbs, she’d force a dessertspoonful of the disgusting tasting stuff into our mouths. If any of us spluttered it back over her, she’d replace the dessertspoon with a tablespoon. Sometimes she’d dose us with senna tea, telling us ‘naughtiness is caused by bowels not working properly. This will fix you up.’ She inspected our hair for lice, which were a fairly common occurrence amongst children in those days, and if she found any, her method of dragging a fine comb through our tightly curled hair is one of the most vivid of my childhood memories. Leonie commiserated with Dellie and me, but she was the most fortunate as her short straight hair presented no resistance to the comb.
Aunty Glad was meaner to Dellie than to Leonie, because she was the youngest and therefore Mum’s favourite, or to me, because I was so often ill. As a child I suffered from many serious diseases from which there was no protection or immunisation, including diphtheria, whooping cough, bronchitis and German measles. Despite my poorly disposition, Mum ensured that I also caught ordinary measles, mumps and chickenpox, as it was believed that children developed immunity through having these diseases as infants. Mothers deliberately exposed preschool-aged children to them so that they could have them ‘over and done with’ before starting school, and also so that we wouldn’t have the much more serious complications which often accompany them if they strike in adulthood, as I was later to learn.
Because of these illnesses I spent a lot of time in bed. Our bedroom—when it wasn’t being used for any other purpose—was directly next to the back verandah w
ith a window that opened onto it. Whenever I was well enough but still recovering in bed, Mum, who did her lengthy bouts of ironing at the table up against the window, would have me recite the alphabet and, later, my times tables. So by the time I started school I already knew these things quite well. Another advantage of this was that when Aunty Glad or Nellie came to visit Mum, they’d be at the table, either talking to her while she continued her work or, with the ironing blanket removed, having their cups of tea. I’d wake from my feverish dozing to hear them talking, and eavesdrop until Mum popped her head through the window to see if I was awake. Even then I’d sometimes feign sleep because she had a habit of checking on me just as they were about to discuss something they thought really private. Occasionally I’d become so involved in their chats that I’d put my own chip in, which enraged Mum who would come in, slam the window closed, tweak my ear and tell me what happened to little girls like me who were sneaky and listened in on other people’s conversations.
Also as a consequence of these diseases, I spent so many days in hospital that I lost count of them, and I was subjected to a lot of ‘home therapies’ because doctors often told Mum there were no cures for the things I had. Mum was a determined person in this regard, and either she or Aunty Glad administered treatments to me of the ‘kill or cure’ variety. When I had diphtheria Mum forced wads of kerosene-soaked rags into my throat, for example, and she would chip up a block of ice that was delivered to our house from the ice factory, fill a tin bathtub with the ice and water and plunge me into it whenever I developed a fever.
As well as these once-only diseases, I also had regular bouts of bronchitis, pneumonia and asthma. I was kept in darkened rooms, had Vicks rubbed on my chest, small camphor bags sewn to my singlets, and from as far back as I can remember, I was often made to sit at a tiny set of table and chairs with a towel draped over my head, inhaling eucalyptus fumes from a bowl of boiling water.
Snake Cradle Page 3