Me, clever at learning? If he knew the number of thumps I’ve received at school and the names I’ve been called to describe what an idiot I am, he would not call me clever.
My father motions for us to move on towards the shed where he’ll change into his work clothes, which are hanging on a peg in the corner. He and Harry Hamilton exchange words that I can’t catch but there’s an understanding between them that means it’s all right for me to be here. There is a contrast between the two men that’s impossible not to notice at the beginning of the day, becoming more apparent as the day goes on. My father, quiet and confident, older, seems sure of what he’s doing. By contrast, Harry Hamilton is anxious and impatient, running around like a rabbit, trying to do ten jobs at once, trying to impress the workmen with his skills as a manager, his organisational ability, but really giving the impression that he’s alone, that the men would know what to do whether he was there or not.
At ten o’clock it’s time for “smoko”, and the men stop for a cup of tea and a cigarette. An older man on the site, wearing a dirty white singlet, is called the Billy Boy, though the men also call him Jack, and it’s his job to prepare the tea in a large, blackened enamel pot that’s placed on a table near the sheds. The men wander in from all directions, from out of nearby bushland, people’s backyards and further up the road. It’s like watching ants appear from a hole in the ground. There seem to be more men than I saw this morning. They pick up cups and mugs of tea from the table. Sugar is in an old biscuit tin with a spoon stuck in it. There is no milk. My father brings me a cup of sweet black tea. He has poured himself one and we sit on two overturned clay pipes and drink. He asks me what I’ve been doing.
Walking around … I even went down to the river.
Don’t go too close to the edge. The grass is long and the soil is soft along there — even where the tracks are worn in. You could easily have an accident. A boy drowned not far from here.
I think of the times that Stefan, Leon, Ziggy and I have jumped into Duck Creek and waded across, sometimes with our clothes on, and never had an accident. My father seems to be reading my mind. He holds up a finger, in warning. This isn’t Duck Creek, you know. This is the George’s River and it’s nothing like the creek. In some parts it’s very deep.
There’s so much bushland.
This is a new part of Sydney, but it won’t be like this for much longer. It’s being developed. The Housing Commission owns it and soon there’ll be new homes for people. After we connect these mains for the water supply we’re taking the sewer right through that way … from Liverpool all the way down. He holds up his arm and points beyond the immediate rows of houses and way past the horizon, drawing an arc across the sky.
Why must the bushland be cleared?
People have to live somewhere. Work like this means that lots of people get jobs. That is important … having work. Earning money. Homes. Factories. Someday this will be a big part of the city.
How long will it be before the houses are built?
Oh, he says, as he finishes his cup of tea, years and years to go. You’ll be a man by then … but it’s happening and it will keep on happening. This part of Sydney won’t always be farms. Come on, back to work.
He tosses his cigarette butt into a watery patch of ground and takes our cups back to the Billy Boy’s table. I watch a peewit swoop down from the sky and start drinking from the water. It seems tame, ignoring me as my father walks away, but it shrieks a protest when I take a step towards it and flies off.
My father’s warning has made a connection in my brain between danger and death. A boy drowned not far from here. How old was he? What was his name? Who discovered his body? If the river flows from one place to another, why won’t the words flow out of my mind? Why is there a fear in my mind?
After smoko my father and several of the men have begun working at a new trench and I wander over to watch them from a distance. A machine has been digging and they’ve gone down into the earth, setting up planks to support the walls and prevent a cave-in. A concrete pipe has been fitted into a sling and a crane like a steel monster will lower it into a hole. The men will then join it to another pipe. It’s a deep hole that’s not wide but looks more like a tunnel and inclines into the earth at an angle the way a slippery-dip would.
Peering down into the excavation from where I stand in the background, the day rushes up to me in images.
I see myself eating a black-pudding sausage sandwich and washing it down with black tea.
Harry Hamilton is bossing his men around.
The river flows lazily past my eyes, its green surface wrinkled by an underwater current.
Cranes and peewits fly overhead, wheel and disappear into the peaceful distances of paperbarks and eucalypts.
I am throwing pieces of blue metal into the river from a pocketful that I’ve taken from the site earlier in the day.
Cows and horses are grazing on the opposite bank.
Suddenly, my reverie is broken by a rushing of men from every part of the site. Harry Hamilton’s voice can be heard above the general commotion. Back, men! Back! He is yelling, pushing men out of the way, as he forces his way to the hole. Weaving, following him, I manage to squeeze through the circle of men. The concrete pipe has slipped out of its sling and fallen into the hole. Below it, with his back to us, a worker is trapped, crying out in pain, calling out that his leg is broken.
Help me! Help me! Ah, hurry! Hurry!
Men are looking to their boss for directives. Harry Hamilton just keeps repeating, Back, men! Give him more space! But I can see that his eyes betray him, and I can hear that he’s panicking. He has no idea what to do. He holds out his arms and manages to restrain the men nearest to him, all except one who pushes him aside and leaps towards the mouth of the sloping tunnel, landing on his backside and disappearing in two or three seconds, his hat flying off, pebbles and clods of earth following him, along with the long-handled, snub-nosed shovel he’d been working with. My father!
Before I can even call out, Dad, don’t! he’s gone and a loud collective Aahh! from the rest of the men follows him. Like a skier racing downhill in the snow he has braced himself into a crouching position, arms tucked into his sides — and down, down he went, almost out of sight.
Good on you, Feliks!
Bravo!
Losing my fear and getting closer to the edge of the hole, I see enough to understand what he’s doing, that he’s using the shovel like a crowbar, trying to lever the pipe back, just enough for the trapped man to slide his leg out. It seems to require a superhuman effort — but there’s a grunt from my father and a loud Hooray! from the men around me. He has shifted the pipe. Two other men have slid down into the hole to assist. Once more, Harry Hamilton seems bewildered, uncertain what he should be doing. Back, men! he continues ordering. Make room, make room! Let them come up … Stand back!
The man’s leg was not broken, just bruised and skinned; one of the workers drove him to the hospital and Harry Hamilton suggested the men have the rest of the day off. My father shrugged his shoulders at the idea and asked, How can we get home? There is no earlier bus.
The injured man was an Italian and to the rest of his countrymen my father was a hero. He was bombarded with one grazie after another every time they came up and slapped him on the back or shook his hand. He shrugged it off but also laughed, smoked cigarettes with them and shared their camaraderie as if he was an Italian himself or they were Poles. Perhaps their common bond was Europe or the fact that they were immigrants and understood each other in a way that only immigrants can.
For the rest of the afternoon I didn’t leave my father’s side, and neither he nor Harry Hamilton complained. Those men that stayed behind went about their work, but the whole atmosphere had changed. On one hand, talk was all about the accident, on the other, there was a casualness about everyone’s activities — and you could sense they were just stalling for time, waiting for half-past four to come around, then they’d be off to the
bus stop.
When my father stripped off to the waist and prepared to wash himself, I asked, How did you know the man’s leg wasn’t broken?
I didn’t, he replied. I had to act quickly in case it did get broken. Time was of the essence … Get my towel ready, will you?
Okay, Dad.
He lathered his face, arms and chest with a bar of Sunlight soap and poured a basin of cold water over himself to wash off the suds. Then another. Ah, that’s beautiful, beautiful. I could see he was enjoying the experience. When I handed him his towel he rubbed it over his skin until it became red. That’ll keep me awake until I get home, hey, son? He referred to me as “son” at special moments, and I was always conscious of the word when he did. Forty years later, when he was dying, as I held him in my arms and thanked him for being a good father, I remembered the sound of his voice saying “son”. In that small room of his, a room stripped bare of all but the barest essentials, it was a powerful word, like a single-word prayer.
When we were in the train, I brought up the subject of the falling pipe again. He explained that there is always a certain amount of danger associated with the kind of work that he does. Men often get their arms and legs skinned and bruised, or cut, and sometimes an arm or a finger gets broken. There are lots of heavy pipes to be moved. Cave-ins happen. You must act quickly in all these cases. One day machines will do all the risky jobs and men won’t have to go down into the trenches … Sure, it’s still work, but there’s no future in it for boys like you.
I wanted to ask why, but he only sighed deeply, rubbed his big calloused hands together and rolled a cigarette.
Unlike the morning train, this one was a lot more crowded with men and women returning from the factories. We turned our faces to the window and watched the suburbs slip past. Cigarette smoke curled in the ceiling above us, creating a harsher kind of haze in the strong light. The accident belonged to another part of the day, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it. We were returning home and I was with my father, that was all that mattered. I never thought that my father’s work might be associated with danger, but the accident had put a different slant on that.
It wasn’t until dinner time that I mentioned the accident to my mother. To my surprise, she didn’t seem impressed by what my father had done. I know he’s a saviour, she said. Why do you think I married him?
Mum, he’s a hero. A pick-and-shovel hero!
Hero, hero … Do you know what the word means?
It’s someone who takes risks and saves people, someone who does great things.
Well, why don’t you be a hero and eat your dinner?
Mum, Dad saved a man’s life. Do you know how dangerous his job is?
Not really, she said. They must have spoken about the accident when I wasn’t there. Why else would she be reacting like she was? During this conversation between my mother and myself, my father ate hungrily and smiled, apparently content not to be taking part in it. So, are you happy with your birthday present? she asked.
Birthday present? Of course! How could I have forgotten? Oh, yes — thank you. It was the best I’ve ever had. There’s something more that I want to say … but I can’t think of what it is. It isn’t to do with Feliks not being my biological father and the way I noticed him as the train was pulling into Liverpool Station. It isn’t to do with him calling me “son” and what having “Skrzynecki” as a surname means to me. It’s not about the word “hero” and it’s not about my memory of being born or the green and yellow room. Whatever it is, it’s right on the tip of my tongue.
I’m about to leave the table and my father looks up, says, Remember what I said, Peter. There’s no future in it for you.
Good Morning, Sister,
God Bless You
St Peter Chanel’s, Berala, is situated on the top of a hill between Regent Street and Kingsland Road. Today, it no longer exists as such, and is known as Trinity College, a Catholic high school run by the Catholic Education Office. The school was named after the Marist French missionary priest Peter Chanel, who worked in the Pacific Islands mission of Futuna.
My parents enrolled me at St Peter Chanel’s after we moved into 10 Mary Street, first and foremost because it offered a Roman Catholic education and adhered strictly to the teachings of the Holy Mother Church; it was also renowned for its discipline. Both of my parents were from traditional Catholic backgrounds where it was considered a sin to eat meat on Friday or to miss Mass on Sunday, and that a child went to Limbo if he or she died without being baptised.
For them, Heaven was for the believers, for those who died in the state of grace. Hell was for the pagans, for the sinners. You said the rosary, prayed to the Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart, the angels and saints. The Pope was God’s vicar on earth and he was always an Italian. He was faultless — infallible! What he said, you did. Catholics didn’t marry non-Catholics or they’d be excommunicated. You kept the Ten Commandments. As kids, we were told that if you died in the state of mortal sin you went straight to Hell. Hell, where maggots feasted on your flesh and intestines, crawled out of your eye sockets and mouth. The hottest fires ever imagined burned in you and around you for eternity. That meant for ever and ever and ever. And we believed it all!
We also prayed for Mary MacKillop, the nun who founded the Order of the Sisters of St Joseph, the order that ran the parish school. The nuns who taught me were nearly all Irish. Sisters Anthony, Dymphna, Fiacre, Ligouri, Brendan, Austin, Anne. Of these, I remember Sister Austin as being the kindest and Sister Brendan as being the most ill-tempered, impatient and brutal when it came to administering corporal punishment. She was renowned for the academic success of her students in the Primary Final examinations, but she was also infamous for the punishment she dished out with a cane, ruler or her knuckles. You were always a bold, brazen lad, and when the back of her hand connected with your ear or head it did so in such a way that you felt the wedding ring she wore because she was a bride of Christ. In all my years of Catholic education, first at St Peter Chanel’s and then at St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, a Christian Brothers college my parents sent me to in 1956, there were only two teachers whom I thought were unnecessarily strict. Of these, Sister Brendan wins hands down.
Upon entering the classroom every morning, our first duty was to stand at attention and address the nun in charge with the greeting, Good morning, Sister, God bless you. We had to be dressed correctly in navy pants, dark blue shirt and woven black silk tie with double gold bars running horizontally, cut square at the bottom.
The nuns wore a habit of dark brown, a veil and a starched white bib that covered their chests and looked like plastic, running from shoulder to shoulder. The veil was kept in place with black hat pins. Their necks were covered with white cloth, as were their cheeks. A strip of white cloth ran across their foreheads; this might have been the lower half of a cap. We used to wonder if they had hair, if they had breasts like other women or were allowed to marry priests. Beneath the bib was a blue lattice-type pattern with the letter J stitched into the diamonds the strips formed. They used men’s handkerchiefs and kept these tucked into the sleeves of their habits or in a side pocket beneath the bib. Below the bib they wore a big black leather belt from which a set of black rosary beads hung and, at an angle, tilted to the right, was a large black crucifix. They wore black sensible shoes that were always shiny.
Subjects taught were Religion, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, English, Australian History, Irish History and Needlework. The nuns were strict disciplinarians, teachers who tolerated no nonsense in the classroom and administered corporal punishment if you misbehaved or appeared to be not doing your best at all times. If they harboured regret or sentimentality for treating you like they did, I saw no evidence of it.
By today’s standards, class sizes were large — forty or fifty pupils to a room. The desks were long and wooden. On weekends, when the partitions were opened and the room was used for Mass, the tops were folded down and the same desks became pews. We sharpened
pencils and filled ink wells, used blotting paper so our pages wouldn’t get smudged, ruled our margins and lines in red pencil and wrote meticulously in copperplate.
In the top right-hand corner of each page we had to write AMDG, the letters of the Latin phrase Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, meaning To the Greater Glory of God. In English, it also stood for All My Duties to God.
Stefan and I were in the same class. One day he called out across the room, Hey, everyone — I know what the letters really mean! They stand for Aunt Mary’s Dead Goat! The class burst into an uproar. Sister Brendan’s mouth twitched, she trembled, turned scarlet, and Stefan received six cuts of the cane across his hands and had to stand in the corner of the room for the rest of the day.
For all their strictness, imposition of discipline and administration of punishment, the nuns were never really able to control all of us. There were some, like Stefan and Donny, who refused outright to conform to their rules. But in most ways, the rest of us did what was expected of us. We came to school because we had to; some liked school, others didn’t. Some liked going to Confession, to the sacraments, to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Many didn’t. There were those who literally trembled when one of the nuns recounted the punishment of the Fires of Hell.
Why does God love us, Sister? Mary Duffy asked in Religion.
Because we are sinners, Mary — and God’s love is so boundless, so great that He gave us His only begotten Son … Yes, His Son to die on the cross, so that we may be saved from eternal damnation.
Stefan would snicker to me under the desk, and whisper, Maybe Mary will become a nun?
Mary was every teacher’s pet, their darling. She was also the prettiest girl in the school, with a cute upturned nose and golden hair that she wore in a pony-tail. Many of the boys in fourth and fifth class were in love with her and wanted to marry her even though she never returned any boy’s attentions and was only interested in talking to Donny. He would laugh and say, She’s in love with herself … But I’ll get her one day. Donny was a year or two older than I was, but because classes were often composite, with, say, fourth and fifth sitting on opposite sides of the classroom, it was possible to develop close friendships with others than just those in your immediate year. So I learnt things from Donny about school and girls. But whatever he meant by “getting her” was a mystery, and I never dared to ask him what he meant.
The Sparrow Garden Page 11