Mum said I needed ‘another string in my bow’ in case I wasn’t able to get into medicine. That string was to be the piano. She told me that there was a ‘coloured woman’ who went all over the world playing piano, and that people were always happy to see her because she brought them joy with her wonderful music. Her name, she said, was Winifred Atwell. If I could only learn to play as well as Miss Atwell, Mum implied, people would like me and I’d be able to make a living.
I’d never heard of Miss Atwell or her music, but Mum went off and arranged for me to have music lessons after school with a woman who lived five blocks away. The woman, Mona Hinkle, who Mum said had also been a famous concert pianist before she married, was very strict and Mum told me how I should speak to her and how I should sit when I was at her house. The first time we went there, Mum came with me and the woman was very nice.
The second time I went alone, and she was okay. She showed me a few simple exercises and had me try to stretch my hand to cover eight keys, an octave. She said I was to do stretching exercises every day. The third time I went, I arrived early and could hear her yelling at the pupil before me and pounding her ruler. When it was my turn she was bad tempered with me, too, and sent me home early because, she said, I hadn’t practised enough.
By the next week, I had several of the scales off pat, and sat down happily to play them. When I’d finished she said I had all the notes but needed to worry about time. She picked up the ruler and made me play the scales again, this time hitting the sharp edge of the ruler on my wrist as I played in time with some beat going on in her head. By the end of the lesson, my wrist was very sore.
A week later, my wrist was still sore but I wasn’t game to tell Mum. Her expectations that I would become a world famous pianist, and the amount of money she was paying for the piano and lessons, put me in a bad position. So, instead of going to the music lesson, I left the house with my music book and hid in a telephone box just outside the Greeks’ corner store until it was time to go home.
A few days later, Mum called me in, asked me a few questions about the lesson, then smacked my face for lying. She said she wouldn’t pay for expensive lessons if I wouldn’t go. I promised I’d go the next time. But at the end of that lesson, I knew I’d never go back again. The pain in my left wrist, where the teacher had tapped the time sharply, was so acute that I cried all the way home.
Mum was unsympathetic about my sore wrist and angry that I wouldn’t go to my lessons. She went to the convent to discuss the problem with one of the nuns, who agreed with her that I should be trained in music. For a while I went over to the music rooms at St Patrick’s College, which was in the same complex as the primary school. I learned very basic theory and more scales.
Over time, however, this arrangement didn’t work out either, because it meant that my sisters had to walk home by themselves with me following an hour or so later. Mum came on her bike and walked home with them a few times. On top of this was the fact that I wasn’t enjoying the lessons, and often had to hang around waiting for more favoured girls to finish before it was my turn.
When these music lessons didn’t work out, Mum became terribly angry. Neither of my sisters showed any inclination to take up the piano, which didn’t seem to bother Mum, but she flew into a rage from time to time, raining words and blows on my head, about the ‘good money I have to keep paying out for this piano for you’—and what a bad child I was for being so lazy, idle and unwilling to go to lessons.
* * *
At the Roxy Theatre every Saturday morning, the local radio station hosted and broadcast a show called ‘Juvenile Jamboree’. Children, talented or otherwise, could put their name on a list and be called on stage to perform. As part of my training for ‘fame’, when it came, Mum began to sign up Dellie and me to take part in it. At first, we recited short poems or sang short songs she had taught us. Singers were accompanied by a pianist who provided the backing for almost everything, from the complete song when she could, to strumming chords if she didn’t know the tune. The program was broadcast live, full of kiddies’ mistakes, tots bursting into tears on stage, and very flat voices along with the occasional pure voice, strung together by a very able host-announcer, who kept the show moving along even when nothing was happening.
Under pressure from Mum, I graduated from short songs to playing short piano pieces. Dellie still had to accompany me, and when I was called to the stage we would both go.
‘And now, next on this morning’s program, we have the very talented Patterson sisters! Yes, yes, come on up, girls . . . and my, listeners, they look very nice today. Everybody here seems to be wearing their new clothes . . . And what are you going to do for us this morning? . . . Wait a moment and I’ll lower the microphone so you can speak into it.
‘Well, girls, what are you going to do? Roberta, you’re going to play a piece on the piano. Wonderful! And Dellie . . . what are you going to do? Oh, you’re going to turn the pages for Roberta. Wonderful!
‘Well, are we ready to start up now girls? . . . Okay, let’s hear it for the Patterson sisters! Oh, yes, a big hand now!’
My sisters’ personalities were very different from my own. Dellie had height, grace and beauty, which I lacked, and she had long legs that enabled her to run quickly. However, she wasn’t actually inclined to run, and would much rather saunter along enjoying fine things on the way. She was fun loving more than hard working, and generous—even though we didn’t have much to be generous with.
Leonie was quite different again. At first I thought this was because she was the baby of the family and consequently was spoiled and didn’t have to take on any responsibilities. But there was more. She was uncooperative, though not in the defiant manner which Dellie sometimes adopted, and very much inclined to be secretive. She was tight and played her cards close to her chest. When Mum gave us each two shillings to spend at the Townsville Show one year, Leonie came home with one and sixpence in her pocket. She’d begged food from us and sips from our softdrinks and whatever else she could cadge, skipping gaily along behind us, all the while quietly keeping her own money intact. Mum used to call her Ikey Mo, and say that she’d still have her first penny clutched in her fist when they buried her. Perhaps because of the age difference between us, Leonie was always more of a chore than a companion to me; she shared few of my interests and we spent very little time playing together during our childhood.
We had a big mango tree in the chook run, and its thick branches and low-hanging leaves shaded the area around the trunk where a tap had been installed and a small cement duck pond had been built. When we were small, Dellie and I had played together, hoisting each other up amongst the boughs of the tree. But as we grew older, she wasn’t so keen to continue these tomboy activities. While I couldn’t run fast like Dellie, I was particularly supple and I enjoyed acrobatics and dangling upside down by my knees, ankles and feet. Mum said that I was always roosting in the mango tree like a fruit bat, and she wondered what I was doing up there alone so often.
While meditating in the mango tree was one of my favourite pastimes, I also liked to prowl around the perimeters of our territory. During daylight hours this could only entail Mum’s turf, that is, our own fence up to the back of the chook run, along the top of the retaining wall to where it joined up with what we called ‘old Mrs Sullivan’s wall’. Then I’d run the length of that wall—poking my hand or face into cracks between the rocks where insects lived or where we spotted small snakes or lizards—before tracking down the cracked footpath to where I’d begun. Occasionally I’d add a reconnaissance of Mrs Scott’s house, too.
Mrs Scott was dying, Mum told me, and when Edie was away it was my responsibility to sleep over at her house and look after her. There wasn’t really much to do there, I just had to be on hand in case she died, but this idea was quite frightening to me. Mrs Scott snored and snuffled loudly all night, and I found comfort in her steady drone. When she broke her rhythm and woke up to use her commode or change her position
, I’d sit bolt upright, tense at the silence.
During a normal week, most of my time was taken up with school, laundry work, running errands for Mum or Mrs Scott, homework, and looking after my sisters. There were other times, such as when the laundry was all hung out to dry and Mum was preparing our food or in that period between teatime at home and when I was expected at Mrs Scott’s, when I was comparatively free to indulge my own whims. If I’d already made my compulsive rounds, I would take off across the road to run and climb over the stony shoulders of Castle Hill, bringing home chinkey apples, tamarinds, cascara beans and honeysuckle flowers from the cathedral bell-tower. So long as I brought something home and there was no outstanding work waiting for me to do, Mum didn’t say much. She wasn’t happy, however, with any plan to go out at night. She was worried about snakes, scorpions and poisonous spiders that lived up on the hill, and which she thought would get me.
But the little freedoms I managed to find for myself at night were bliss. I was unable, and unwilling even to try to convey to Mum the feeling of wonder, warmth and knowledge that somehow seeped out of the earth and into me through the pores of my skin whenever I lay flattened across the ground. The spiritual energy of rocks would course through my body and peace and stillness would flow into me. I couldn’t tell Mum that I sometimes enjoyed the company of snakes and other creatures or that we had talks. I didn’t have the trust which may have enabled me to share my secrets with her.
Poor old Mrs Sullivan died, and her house was put up for auction. Old Bert was moved out to live in another boarding house up the road somewhere. This situation made Mum very upset, she was used to living in the middle house between the two old ladies, Mrs Sullivan and Mrs Scott, and the three of them had fairly tight control over the dip. Our houses were huddled so close together that we would all cooperate with each other out of sheer necessity and proximity.
Suddenly, the possibility arose that newcomers with different ideas could move in and take over. Both Mrs Sullivan and Mrs Scott had become indebted to Mum in a variety of ways and over a long time, so the relationships which maintained stability in our block were badly skewed by this turn of events.
Mum and Laaka put their heads together and whispered away on the back verandah far into the night. Then Mum went down to see the bank manager. She told him how she, a widow with three little girls, would be at the mercy of strangers and possible child molesters if she was unable to take over Mrs Sullivan’s house. Laaka, who lived there anyway, was standing by, ready to be Mum’s first tenant, and he would continue to bring into the house Finnish seamen who wanted to jump ship and settle in Australia. Although, I doubt that Mum told the bank manager about this aspect of their plan.
The last outstanding problem was ensuring that the price didn’t go so high that Mum couldn’t afford it. The house had been neglected for years, and what with Mrs Sullivan’s age, blindness, and Bert’s foul habits, it wasn’t the most salubrious of accommodations. Still, it was within walking distance of town, in a very quiet little backwater off of a main thoroughfare, so some people were sure to be interested.
On auction day, Mum had me sit at the piano while the auctioneer and prospective buyers arrived. I was to play all the vamp tunes she hated so much, and pound them out at full pitch. She said I could make as much noise as I liked, and my sisters were encouraged to sit near me and do likewise. After a while, she said we should run out and see who was coming to the auction. When we were too shy and just peeped out over our own verandah rail, she said she would give us three pence each if we made as much noise as possible. Then she pushed us out onto the stairs so that anyone considering buying the house could see that they would be living next to a houseful of noisy kids.
Mum was successful and bought the house for less than a thousand pounds.
No sooner had she bought it, though, than she began to panic about her ability to pay for it. Laaka’s daughter was away doing nursing training and perhaps Mum worried that he might decide to live near her, and then Mum would be in the lurch.
A Young Women’s Christian Association hostel was located on Denham Street. One day, Mum announced that she had been given a contract for the YWCA laundry, which entailed doing the work at our house plus getting the wash to and from the hostel.
Mum asked Laaka to build a very large cart with two long wooden handles and a crossbar in front. She said that I had to use it to collect the washing, but that Dellie and Leonie would both help me.
I’d trundle the cart down to the hostel on my way to school and, with Matron’s permission, leave it partially concealed by the hydrangea bushes in the hostel’s front garden. By the afternoon, Matron would have the cart filled with soiled laundry and I would bring it home. Sometimes my sisters helped, but at other times they did not and there was little I could do about it. The load often consisted of over a hundred sheets, plus pillow cases, towels, table cloths and table napkins. When the hostel had less guests, there was less work, but normally they had a full house. Rivers of sweat poured down my face and into my eyes as I dragged that metal-wheeled cart noisily along the road and up the hill. I used to think I must have done something wrong in my life already and that this was the penance.
Mum was elated by the enormous washloads and the cash the work brought in, with which she was able to pay off the mortgage. She’d had to put up our house as collateral, and this had made her nervous about how any economic downturn might affect us. She kept reminding me that she wasn’t a young woman and didn’t want to leave us without so much as a roof over our heads if she died. The YWCA contract almost killed both of us, although Mum lashed out and bought a hand wringer and an agitator, which fitted on top of the concrete tubs and was the forerunner to today’s free-standing washing machines. She also had a gas copper installed, which was super because our wood copper had been out in the open, and when it was raining, it was very hard to fire it up. The gas copper sat neatly under cover by the side of the tubs with a penny meter mounted on the wall above it.
With the laundry, there was too much work to be done for Mum to worry about my piano lessons. When the acute pain in my wrist abated, I continued to experience discomfort. When we were sitting at the table one day, Mum looked down and said, ‘What’s that on your hand?’
A big knob, ugly and distorted, had grown on my wrist; it was a cyst which had turned into a ganglion. Through the nuns, Mum had made contact with Dr Ward, a Catholic medical practitioner whose surgery was not too far from our house, and she made me go there to see him. Dr Ward recommended surgery to remove the ganglion and said he’d do it under a local anaesthetic in his office. Mum accompanied me on the day, but she made me go in alone while she sat outside, because she didn’t have the stomach to watch operations.
I was fascinated with the entire procedure, from first injection through to having my arm strapped up in a sling. There was a lot of pain, however, particularly later when my wrist throbbed and I had to take painkillers before I could get to sleep. But I fell in love with the idea of being able to perform operations, and my goal grew from studying ordinary medicine to surgery.
As well as the attraction I felt towards the mysteries which lay concealed under people’s skins, I was also becoming aware of the increasingly abrasive nature of white people’s relationships with me as I grew older, and I thought it would be better for my future if patients had to be anaesthetised while I operated on them to save their lives. I didn’t want to save their lives and have to deal with their racism.
From the highest point on our side of the track we could see across three blocks to Flinders Street, in the centre of town. There was not much besides a few little cottages between the top of that hill and where the Townsville State High School was located. Across from the school was the Townsville Regional Electricity Board, where I was sent to pay bills once we had the power connected. On the next corner, directly across from the police station, was the ambulance centre, and both were one short block from the main street.
Once wh
en we were walking home with Mum, a dark-skinned man was coming out of the ambulance centre. He was carrying a hessian sack which he put into a box in the front cabin of a little truck. The ambulance men were speaking to him so loudly that they seemed to want us to know that the man had a snake in his bag. Mum smiled at them and kept walking.
Around the corner, she explained that the man was Ram Chandra, an Indian who caught snakes and milked their venom so it could be made into antidote. Mum had read about him in the newspaper. I was instantly fascinated, and Ram Chandra seemed like someone after my own heart.
When I had time I’d run the three blocks to the ambulance centre just to inquire if the snake man had been around. The firemen and the ambulance officers may have been bored between their emergencies, because they were quite happy to sit and chat with passing children. The concrete driveway where the ambulances were parked was always smooth and cool underfoot, and Dellie and I had limped in there a few times to get help removing glass splinters from our feet.
From my perch at the top of the hill, I was also able to see Ram Chandra’s truck when he parked alongside the ambulance centre. Then, quick as a flash, I’d be off down the hill. Mr Chandra once made the mistake of letting me help carry an end of a box he was taking into the centre, and from then on, as Mum said, I made a pest of myself.
I saw how Mr Chandra approached snakes, quickly pinning them to the ground with a stout stick, Y-shaped at one end, then gripping them fast just behind their heads. So I decided I’d pick one up too, when I next had the opportunity. But there’s a difference between making such a decision and actually coming across a snake while carrying a stick of the right shape plus a thick hessian bag. Sometimes I’d have the bag and stick, and search for days for a snake, but to no avail. On other occasions, a very likely snake would be laying across my path, and I’d just be short of the stick and bag.
Snake Cradle Page 8