Читать книгу Butterflies and Demons - Eva Chapman - Страница 13

CHAPTER 3

Aliens

Svitochka didn’t know where in the world she had landed. A hair-raising escape through a scary forest, a long tedious journey over several oceans, sojourns in various migrant camps, a stint on a sheep farm, and now here; on the sunbaked streets of Adelaide, which harboured some decidedly unfriendly children. Her mother Tatiana, who loved partying and dancing and had disgraced herself by flirting outrageously with sailors and jackeroos, couldn’t stand the quiet. The corner shop at the end of Commercial Road fell sadly short of the expectations engendered by the gaily-coloured Rosella Parrot painted on its side. Within the dingy interior lurked a few unpromising tins inscribed with writing Tatiana couldn’t decipher, and no fresh produce whatsoever. A rather ancient proprietor regarded Svitochka’s skipping about with great suspicion. Tatiana hastily bought a bottle of Rosella tomato sauce before escaping. She dragged Svitochka by tram into the city centre, looking for hustle and bustle and bright city lights. None were to be found.

Adelaide stood quiet, orderly and well defined. In one way, this was reassuring – Tatiana flashed back to Magdeburg, the city she had been transported to at the tender age of seventeen as a Nazi slave. For the next three years she witnessed Allied War planes pulverise this magnificent baroque city into a pile of rubble, killing most of the population, including thousands of her fellow slaves. Adelaide stood reassuringly calm and serene. In the shade of the Post Office tower, Tatiana looked out over the marigolds of Victoria Square, not knowing that they blanketed Adelaide’s own war past, when they had been dug up for air raid shelters. The fact that Japanese bombers were extremely unlikely to fly so far south was irrelevant, the shelters reassured the South Australian citizens. Svitochka and her mother looked up at the statue of Queen Victoria, wondering who she was. Little did they know that in the name of the British Empire she had vanquished a far older race who, at full moon, danced ecstatically in this very square. But no one danced here now. Tatiana consoled herself by taking Svitochka to the nearby Adelaide Market, where German and Greek traders sold rather delicious produce. She filled her basket with sausage and olives, while Svitochka buried her face in a torte.

Tatiana was disappointed in Adelaide. In fact, that was putting it mildly. She had been induced into leaving the flattering attentions of numerous Jackeroos at a sheep farm near Wagga Wagga when Ivan had flown in to propose to her. Tatiana was impressed! Fresh from hard labour on a hydroelectric scheme in Tasmania, and fed up with loneliness and bad food in a cheap boarding house, Ivan wanted a wife. He had fallen in love with the tempestuous Tatiana on the journey to Australia. Now he had landed a job at the new General Motors Holden factory in Adelaide, and flew Tatiana and her daughter in. He was seduced by what would later be called Playfordism. The Premier of South Australia, Thomas Playford, attracted large numbers of refugees with promises of plenty of work, cheap housing, and cheap goods. Ivan was Tom Playford’s perfect migrant; willing to work extremely long hours and help build the new industrial South Australia. Well, not quite so perfect – he was in fact a secret Jew, spoke a weird language, had weird customs, and could conceivably even be a commie. But these vagaries were to be smartly dealt with by the assimilation policies of both Commonwealth and State Government. Good Neighbour Councils sprang up all over Australia for this very task. Even new citizenship conventions were drawn up, to prepare for the influx of ‘aliens’, as the refugees were called. Of course, this did not extend to people with coloured skin. The White Australia Policy was a given in the 1950s, as surely as flies crawled up your nose.

Svitochka did not even know of the existence of Australia’s original inhabitants. After all, the British had brought ‘history’, as well as their colourful spider-web flag, to terra nullius. Any inconvenient indigenous people were relegated to ‘pre-history’, and safely tucked away out of sight in far flung missions. But Svitochka did play on an old bent gumtree in Heywood Park, which was just around the corner from Commercial Road. Heywood Park was the last remnant of the Black Forest which covered the Adelaide Plain, in which the Kaurna once roamed, and in whose trees another little girl, Midlato, sat mesmerised by a British penny, over one hundred years earlier. Governor Robe razed South Australia’s extensive Black Forest during the Crimean War.

Wirra Woman: Why?

Author: In case escaping Russians tried to hide there of course! Akin to the riddle of why marigolds were dug up from Victoria Square during World War Two.

Wauwe Woman: I want to comment. You think Svitochka had a bad time being a refugee? You try being a refugee in your own country! That’s what happened to my people. At least Svitochka had more rights than us mob.

Tatiana and Ivan had a two-year compulsory contract to work out, in return for their passages to Australia. They stared at their incomprehensible ‘Alien Registration Certificates’ in dread. All they knew was that must obey these certificates and not lose them. Any migrants who broke the contract were jailed and deported. God knew where to! Giant graveyards were all that was left of the countries they came from.

While Ivan settled into his mind-numbing position on the assembly line at GM Holden, Tatiana was forced to work as a domestic. She hated it. She’d had enough of slave labour during the war. She soon fell out with Miss Bressler. Jeanette watched sadly as the trio trundled their cases past her window. They moved to a mansion in Springfield, from which Ivan cycled several miles to work on a bike rented from Super Elliots in town, and where Tatiana slaved as a domestic. But they soon moved again when Tatiana refused to wash off the excrement spread on the walls by the spoilt two-year-old of the household. Tatiana’s friend Katherina, whom she had met on the ship, was fortunate to land an office job at Charles Birks, a large department store in the city. When Tatiana voiced her envy, Katherina replied,

‘I tell you it’s no picnic. The boss makes me come in an hour earlier than the Australian employees. I have to clean the offices. Of course, I don’t get extra money for this. The rest of the time I’m a dogsbody, running around doing all the shit jobs that the Australians won’t do.’

At the beginning of 1952 Svitochka turned five and went to school. She found this very unnerving, as she was the only child with a strange name. She envied the girls in their pretty pink angora jumpers, buckled shoes, and short bobbed hair. These contrasted painfully with her lace-up boots, heavy trousers, and long plaits, through which her mother wove brightly coloured ribbons. These ribboned braids, all the rage in some backwater village of the Soviet Union, at best attracted quizzical stares from these fluffy girls who sported easy hair styles. Their lunchboxes contained neat, white triangles of bread, encasing delicate slivers of Kraft cheese. They visibly moved away when Svitochka opened her lunchbox, liberating a pungent waft of garlic sausage bought from a new Polish stall in the market.

On the first morning, the class stood up and sang God Save the King. Svitochka didn’t know who this king was. Two days later Adelaide was plunged into a deep gloom. When Tatiana took Svitochka into town to buy a straw hat, the stores were all draped in black. Pictures of George VI, resplendent with crown and sceptre, replaced the usual window displays. Flags hung at half mast. People shuffled about sadly, not raising their eyes from beneath the brims of their hats. Tatiana and Svitochka were puzzled. On the next schoolday, Svitochka discovered that the king was dead. In the big quadrangle, wearing her new straw hat with red cherries, she now had to sing God Save the Queen. This did not fill her with a lot of confidence in God.

She wasn’t long at this school before the family moved again. On the first day at her next school, the headmistress asked to see her stomach. Australia was very strange, thought Svitochka, not really wanting to show this stranger her belly. Reluctantly she pulled up her jumper. ‘Go home immediately,’ the headmistress pronounced. ‘You have chicken pox!’

The chairs in the Returned Servicemen’s League Hall on Tapleys Hill Road waited in neat rows for the afternoon Good Neighbour Council meeting. Miss Lynette Taplow, buck-toothed and squinting behind goggle glasses, sat at the front table. Her canary-yellow cardigan hung proudly from the back of her chair. She had just retrieved it from lay-by at Harris Scarfe in Rundle Street, having paid one shilling for several weeks from her scanty wage as a draper’s assistant. Now she was annoyed that it was too hot to wear it. It was Wednesday half-closing day, and she was here for an important meeting of how local residents must handle the aliens who were filtering like germs into the area. She had already seen said aliens walk tentatively past the draper’s shop, looking curiously at the materials and embroidery threads in the window. She held her breath and was enormously relieved when they walked on. Her shop was situated further along Tapley’s Hill Road, dangerously close to the new Philips factory, where floods of aliens were being sent to work.

An imperceptible flush spread beneath Lynette’s powder. She lightly swung the canary yellow cardie over her hot shoulders. Barry Guthrie had walked in, his brown shorts and gartered socks adorning his freckled legs.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Taplow. Blimey it’s hot today!’ He immediately dismissed the uncharitable thought that her cardigan matched the colour of her teeth. His knees bulged out from in between his shorts and socks like awkward cauliflowers. His red flap ears sprang free as he took off his hat and liberated his sweaty head. Lynette didn’t care – he was her last hope as she sat on the dusty shelf of spinsterhood.

Recently widowed, Guthrie was a returned serviceman from World War One. He never tired of reminding people that 60,000 Australians were killed in that war, twice the number as in World War Two. He knew that soldiers suffered terribly in both wars, but he liked to think it was much harder for him. As a youngster, he had survived being blown apart by Turks at Gallipoli, been bombarded by Fritz in France, and endured having to watch his mates die in rat-infested trenches behind an elusive Western Front. He felt that this RSL Hall, built in dedication to servicemen returning from the Great War, was his stomping ground, and resented the new swathe of cocky soldiers who swashbuckled in from the recent war. The Government was bending over backwards to reward them with homes, work and education: much better than he’d had, when he returned from his war and was stuck out on a rocky barren farm.

The Second World War soldiers had been helped with payouts, water schemes, and bags of nutrients. Their farms were flourishing. Barry felt overlooked. An injury, courtesy of Fritz, had prevented him from enlisting again but he had worked bloody hard for the war effort. As supervisor at the Hendon Munitions factory he turned out guns and bullets galore, so those cocky whippersnappers could thrash the Japs. After the war, he felt as useless as the abandoned Hendon plant. But life moved on. A Dutchman bought the site at a bargain price, reincarnated it as the Philips factory, and Premier Playford bestowed his blessing with an official opening in 1947. Barry secured an important job supervising a growing migrant workforce. He was also in charge of the newly established local Good Neighbour Council. Today was the first meeting.

Displaced persons were trickling into the area. Fed up with being squeezed into hot iron huts, and travelling from far off immigration centres, many were setting up asbestos shacks in Royal Park, a suburb near the new factory on the other side of Tapley’s Hill Road. The distinctly regal name belied the flat, uninviting, treeless wasteland that had once been the marshy reedbeds of the Port River, and was now scented by sewerage works. This alien invasion was not popular. Barry’s job today at this Good Neighbour Council meeting was to help the good people of Hendon deal with the influx. The Labour Party under Prime Minister Chifley, which had been instrumental in bringing out these Displaced People, faced huge opposition. A 1947 countrywide poll showed that 83% of Australians were against accepting refugees from the Holocaust, and the government was accused of diluting the ethnic Anglo-Saxon balance. The immigration minister Arthur Calwell sought to pacify this opposition by dictating clearly,

‘Our aim is to Australianise all our migrants … in as short a time as possible … only the local Australian people … can bring about the ultimate assimilation of any group of migrants in their midst.’

Barry braced himself with a glass of Woodies lemonade supplied by Lynette, and waited for the hall to fill. This particular section of ‘local Australian people’ grumbled fiercely at the impending destruction of their Anglo-Saxon way of life.

Barry sighed as he saw the biggest grumbler of all walk in and hand Lynette a tray of lamingtons for afternoon tea. It was Mildred Taplow, Lynette’s sister-in-law. She was as large and imperious as the floral dress that draped over her expansive middle. The voluminous garment fell incongruously short, just below her stout knees, in the jauntier post-war style. Even though it was stiflingly hot she was determined to uphold British values and wore hat, gloves and shoes to match. As she took off her hat and waved the flies away, she exposed her hairstyle, a direct copy of her heroine Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI; as short and incongruous as her skirt.

Mildred had snapped up Albert Taplow, a diminutive, shy man, quite late in life, and to everyone’s surprise produced Trevor, who trailed behind her.

‘Say hello to Aunty Lynette,’ she ordered the small boy, ‘and go and sit down.’ Trevor meekly did as he was told. He had disgraced himself already by getting shoe polish on his clean white socks. Mildred’s attempts to make him to look like Prince Charles had failed miserably. The back of his head was suitably shaved but that was where the resemblance ended. Instead of a princely smooth top, a gingery unkempt frizz sprouted haphazardly to defy his mother.

‘Why are these reffos coming to this neighbourhood?’ was the burning question on all lips, as Guthrie started the meeting. All welcomed British migrants heartily. In fact, Mildred had enjoyed sending parcels to the beleaguered mother island during the war. She took pride in being a British subject, and in the fact that she and her husband were direct descendants of early settlers. Albert Taplow’s great-grandfather and namesake had come over on one of the first ships, and Mildred’s great aunt, Mildred Fowler, followed soon after. Mildred Taplow felt behoven to maintain South Australia’s clean Anglo-Saxon heritage. These refugees from Eastern Europe were an entirely different prospect. It was fine to send them up to the Leigh Creek coalfields or to the army barracks at Woodside or even up to Mildred’s hometown Gawler, to work on the little Para reservoir; the first lot of Displaced Persons had been sent to these places. And rightly so. Premier Playford was to be commended for bringing South Australia into the 20^th century. But they were not wanted here; not in this bastion of Britishness. Not in Hendon. These Displaced Persons were well and truly aliens. They did not speak the language. They just would not fit in.

Barry Guthrie took a deep breath. Even though he went along with the mood in the room, his big task was to persuade his truculent audience that reffos were here to stay. The Phillips factory really needed them, as did the large new General Motors Holden Plant, just the other side of the Port Road.

‘But why can’t the British do these jobs?’

Barry didn’t really like to say they wouldn’t put up with the long hours and inferior accommodation; nor that it was easier to herd the aliens into the unskilled dirty jobs Brits and Aussies refused to do. Instead he explained that these reffos were among the lucky few to escape the bloodbath in Eastern Europe; they were homeless, rootless, and grateful to be working and to have food in their bellies. Mildred and the others shuffled and coughed. Tales of hardship did not move them. They had all been toughened by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deprivation of the war years. Rations for petrol, tea, and butter had only recently ended. And anyway, there was still a war on. Australian forces were keeping back the commies in Korea.

‘How do we know these reffos aren’t a bunch of commies? How do we know who, or what, we are letting into our own backyards?’ Murmurs of ‘too right!’ spread about the room. Lynette shooed the flies off the lamingtons.

‘All foreigners are suspect,’ was the underlying conviction. The goodly people of this area remembered their outrage when the giant 64-acre Hendon site had been bought by foreigners. Wasn’t Tom Playford selling them out? Mildred had felt proud to contribute to the British war effort at the Hendon Munitions plant. For the first time in her life, she had received a wage to bolster the measly pounds her husband brought in from his job at Coles department store. The new Hendon railway station, built on the road at the back of her house in Pudney Street, had increased the value of their home. Big puffing trains spewed out workers for the munitions factory every morning and swallowed them up every evening. Now Mildred saw a different kind of people stuffing up the carriages. They wore ill-assorted clothes and gabbled in uncouth languages. She didn’t like to enter the compartments with ‘them’. They smelt awful and slurped soup out of filthy looking containers. She even saw one gnawing on a chicken leg! They were downright disgusting. At least they didn’t live in this neighbourhood – yet! What would happen to the value of her house if they did?

In between swatting flies Lynette Taplow took notes. Barry Guthrie wearily fielded the barrage of questions and complaints and threw back the answers:

‘No. These reffos are not commies. They’re running away from commie regimes.’

‘No, we aren’t bringing in any enemies. No Nazis. A few Austrians and Germans maybe, but they all hated Hitler.’

‘Jews? No, they are excluded from the Displaced Persons’ programme.’

‘No, there are no more Greeks or enemy Eyeties.’

Guthrie was tired. It was nearly four o’clock. Time for lamingtons and a nice cup of tea.

‘No, you’ll be pleased to know this influx of people mostly have fair skin and many have blue eyes. As Calwell has said, it is up to us to ‘Australianise’ them as quickly as possible.’

‘And dark-skinned people?’

‘Good God no!’

Barrie Guthrie and the RSL were 100% behind the White Australia Policy. As he gratefully pounced on the lamingtons Guthrie shuddered, remembering the dreadful incident when an Aborigine man, fresh back from fighting, tried to join the RSL.

‘I am a returned serviceman. I defended my country. I dodged bullets alongside my white mates,’ he argued, before being unceremoniously escorted from the hallowed chambers.

While Ivan was Playford’s ideal migrant, Tatiana was Playford’s worst. This was probably not surprising, since Playford’s great-grandfather was a fiery Baptist minister who, in the early days of the colony, took it upon himself to stamp out wicked and frivolous behaviour. And Tatiana was wicked and frivolous. She wanted to have fun; to drink vodka; to dance; to paint her nails; to wear mink. She hated the drudgery of being a domestic. She also hated the prejudice she felt from ordinary Australians, especially every time they moved house. The Pleznowskis always seemed to be the first reffos in any new area but also the last to be served in shops. The neighbours of the semi they rented in the respectable suburb of Payneham were decidedly hostile. Tatiana was close to blowing point. She was volatile already, but a past where she had always been the underdog weighed heavily on her pretty brow. One stifling afternoon when she and Svitochka had waited a long time to be served, Tatania exploded. To Svitochka’s mortification, Tatiana started screaming at all the people in the shop. The trouble was she couldn’t stop. It was like she had unleashed a bag of demons. She fell to the floor thrashing violently and sobbing hysterically. A doctor and then an ambulance were hastily called. Svitochka stood miserably in a corner as her mother was taken away.

A lady in a large hat covered in grapes took her by the hand and led her up Payneham Road to an imposing house, Wanslea Home, one of many philanthropic institutions in Adelaide. This one had been set up in 1941 to support the war effort, and was now dedicated to looking after children whose mothers were seriously ill or hospitalised. Svitochka was the first refugee girl they had ever seen. The ladies were kind enough, but Svitochka felt miserable as she pushed the baked beans around her plate. The taste reminded her of disgusting Rosella tomato sauce. She was worried about Tatiana, who seemed to flip alarmingly from being a laughing, sunny mother to a demonic, wicked mother. She would subject Svitochka to vicious beatings with seemingly little provocation. However, the demon you know is better than the one you don’t, and Svitochka wiggled the cherries which adorned her straw hat to comfort herself. Tatiana, the good mother, had bought it for her, and she now refused to take it off. She didn’t like this place. Not one bit. She didn’t like the way ladies with forced smiles looked down at her as if she was an exhibit in a jar. She hoped she didn’t have to stay here forever. Thankfully, she was saved by a very worried-looking Ivan; who took her home immediately. Tatiana was gobbling tablets, which seemed to calm her down.

Lady Norrie was arranging flowers in one of the upper bedrooms of Government House. She had just returned from accompanying her husband Sir Willoughby, the Governor of South Australia, on a visit to schools and mines in the outback. The Norries believed that their duty in the postwar years was to keep the ‘empire spirit’ alive. And they did so with gusto. Lady Norrie supported many charitable and patriotic causes, but there were limits. Like her husband, Lady Norrie criticised the ‘misguided sentimentality’ of Dr Charles Duguid. This goodly doctor kept harping on about Aborigine rights. He even had brought (would you believe!) Aborigines back from the missions, and allowed some to live in his house in the affluent suburb of Magill. She shuddered at the thought.

Lady Norrie preferred to direct her attention to worthier causes, like the ‘Food for Britain Appeal’, or assisted schemes to bring more British migrants over. The Norries stalwartly conceded that South Australia should accept Holocaust survivors, even though most of the population had voted against it. It was, after all, the Christian thing to do, and there were so many ‘dirty’ jobs they could usefully carry out: like excavating the brown coal up at Leigh Creek, so that South Australia did not have to rely on the eastern states for black coal. Or hacking at hard baked clay in the blinding heat, in order to assemble hundreds of miles of pipelines so precious water could keep the lawns of Adelaide green. She and Willoughby had examined the spartan Nissen hut up at Leigh Creek, where Hungarian refugee, Magdalena Leolkes, had made the best of a grim situation while her husband excavated coal. Magdalena felt honoured by the Governor’s visit and spruced up her hut so it looked as immaculate as possible. Lady Norrie was spared seeing how the nappies that hung on makeshift lines immediately turned black with the coal dust that pervaded everything. But Magdalena wasn’t complaining. At least she wasn’t in a tent, nor forcibly separated from her husband, as was the lot of most other Displaced Persons.

But as Lady Norrie arranged her roses, she saw something far worse than three children crammed into a corner of a stinking hot hut while a pot simmered on a wood stove – so terrible she nearly dropped her vase. Horror of horrors – there were some people on the immaculately green front lawn of Government House. They looked like peasants. They certainly weren’t British.

‘Oh my God. It looks like they are spreading out a blanket for a picnic?’

With great urgency, she called for the servants.

Tatiana had at last persuaded Ivan to have a Sunday off and take her and Svitochka on a picnic. She wanted to go to the Botanic Gardens, which she heard were full of European trees. The trio entered what they thought was the Botanic Gardens – it was beautiful and green – full of the magnificent firs and oaks which Tatiana really missed. Choosing a charming spot surrounded by beds of flowers, she started to lay out the picnic: her homemade plaited bread dredged with poppy seeds; chunks of Polish sausage; dill cucumber; piroshki stuffed with cabbage. But scarcely had she taken out the flask of cold black tea from her basket, when she was startled by shouts. People were running towards them gesticulating wildly. Svitochka looked up in alarm. These people seemed very upset. Many unrecognisable words tumbled over the picnickers. Tatiana and Ivan looked to Svitochka to translate.

‘Botanica Gah-den?’ she carefully formed the difficult words.

‘No, no, no, this is Government House! You must get out immediately. The Botanic Gardens are further up North Terrace.’

Tatiana, thinking this another attack on her being a New Australian, refused to budge.

‘No, Mama,’ implored Svitochka. ‘This is where the Governor lives. We must leave now. This is not the Botanic Gardens.’

Again, she felt humiliated as they packed up their picnic and were hastily shooed out.

But not all outings were this fraught. John Martin’s Christmas Pageant had been the highlight of Svitochka’s life so far. John Martin’s was the name of a large department store in Rundle Street, the main street in central Adelaide. Its owner, Edward Hayward, decided to start a pageant in 1933 as a pick-me-up during the Depression. For generations of South Australians, Christmas came to town on the day Santa waved from his pageant float and made his triumphant waddle into the Magic Cave, (conveniently located in the centre of John Martin’s toy department). Every November an explosion of colour, music and magic was foisted onto the wide clean streets of Adelaide. Svitochka was in seventh heaven, squealing with delight as huge clowns swooped dramatically over her head, giant ladies floated serenely past and every conceivable fairytale unfolded upon mammoth floats before her very eyes.

March 1952 marked the end of two years that the alien family had landed on Australian soil. Tatiana and Ivan now received exemption certificates, which meant they were released from compulsory labour. Even though Tatiana didn’t really love Ivan, she consented to marry him because he had promised to buy her a house. Their days of living in other people’s houses to other people’s rules were soon to be over. Tatiana bought a beautiful crepe dress and stunning hat and gloves from John Martin’s. Svitochka, delighted to have her hair liberated into curls, wore a white lace dress. Katherina and her husband Kurt were the witnesses. Ivan, bothered that his beautiful betrothed thought money grew on trees, reluctantly shelled out his hard-earned cash. Playford’s ideal immigrant had bust his gut working double shifts at Holden, and had scraped together enough overtime pay for a deposit on a house. It was at number 17 Pudney Street, Hendon, and only a ten-minute bike ride from the Holden factory.

Mrs Taplow donned her navy-blue gloves and hat, a stiff dark blue affair. Must look smart, she thought. She was on a mission. And dreaded it. But it was her duty to ‘Australianise’ these aliens as swiftly as possible.

‘Brush your hair, Trevor,’ she ordered. His frizzing hair did not take kindly to being brushed, insisting instead on forming little anarchic ridges that threatened the straightness of the side parting that his mother had so painstakingly instigated.

‘We must set a good example for the New Australians who have moved in down the road.’

Sleepy lizards blinked as they walked along what was called ‘the back road’. This road skirted the railway line to the gates of the former Hendon Munitions works, now the Philips Factory. A variety of houses in Pudney Street backed on to this road, interspersed with empty blocks and a few back-enders. Because of a shortage of building materials and cash, many families built the back half of their house first, like the Portman’s at Number 19; next door to the aliens. Old Mrs Briggs had lived alone at Number 17 since Mr Briggs had died. Mildred bristled inside to think that reffos had bought this house.

‘I thought they lived in tin shacks?’ she spat at breakfast. ‘And where did they get all that money from?’ Albert quietly speared his bacon. Reffo rants were the norm these days. He didn’t need to answer the rhetorical question.

‘Up to no good, no doubt. Many decent Adelaide citizens can’t possibly afford to buy a house.’ The only reason Mildred had her own home was because she had snared Albert Taplow, who had lived with his cantankerous old mother and his spinster sister Lynette. Old Mrs Taplow died and Lynette moved out to live with a maiden aunt. Thankfully, Mildred now ruled the roost. She had to keep reminding herself of what was said at the last Good Neighbour Council meeting; these Displaced Persons were here to stay, whether she liked it or not. Premier Playford, she kept being told, was making South Australia great. And, as her special civic duty, she had taken on the responsibility of making sure this particular family was assimilated as quickly as possible.

Mildred and Trevor turned left through the yellow shed that served as Hendon Station, and walked up the little side road which flanked No 17. As Mrs Taplow opened the front gate to the 1920s bungalow-style house, she gasped at what had happened to Mrs Briggs’ garden. The neatly laid lawn edged by rosebushes planted yonks ago by Mr Briggs was completely dug up. A man with a large nose was leaning on his shovel, his stained white singlet soaked with sweat. A little girl was jumping excitedly near where the man was digging, and shrieking in a strange language. They both looked up as the gate squeaked.

Mildred and Trevor stepped gingerly up the path in between clods of earth. The wire screen of the front door creaked open and a blonde woman in a spotted dress stepped out on to the large veranda. She looked quizzically at the visitors.

‘Oh, how do you do? My name is Mrs Taplow, and this is Trevor. We live further up the road and would like to welcome you to Pudney Street.’

The sweaty man looked blank but came forward anyway.

‘Helloia,’ he said, hand outstretched. The neatly gloved hand stayed glued to the dark blue handbag. His hand hovered awkwardly for a few seconds, as if shaking away a fly. He enunciated slowly.

‘Helloia. I pliz to mit you. Me Ivan,’ he pointed. ‘Zis Tatiana and zis Svitochka.’ Both introductees gave beaming smiles. Trevor was mesmerised by Tatania’s silver tooth as it flashed in the sun.

Svitochka jumped up and down again, and excitedly pointed to something in the freshly dug earth.

‘Flog, flog!’ Trevor saw a large green frog leap towards the wooden fence. Trevor liked Svitochka immediately and longed to take a closer look at the frog, but dutifully held on to his mother’s other gloved hand.

Tatiana called out something unintelligible to Svitochka who stopped skipping about and joined her mother on the veranda. No one knew what to say next. Svitochka was fascinated by the stiff blue spikes that protruded from the side of Mrs Taplow’s hat.

Finally, Mrs Taplow spoke. ‘I believe that Swi-switokka starts tomorrow at Hendon Primary school. So does Trevor. We would like to pick her up and take her. We know a shortcut.’

Tatiana looked uncertainly at Ivan. She wasn’t quite sure what this nice lady was saying. Svitochka gabbled something to her mother.

‘Oh yes, tank you, tank you – vairy goode.’ She rattled a question at Svitochka.

Svitochka looked up shyly, and pointing to the watch on Ivan’s wrist, asked, ‘What is time for shkool pliz?’ Svitochka obviously did a lot of translating for her parents.

‘We will pick you up at half past eight.’

‘Huff pust eight,’ repeated Svitochka slowly.

There then ensued a dramatic discussion between the trio. Mrs Taplow wondered how so much could be said about such a simple instruction, and why did they need to shout and gesticulate so much. She wasn’t to know that in the Russian language half past eight was said differently. It was expressed as half of nine. So Tatiana wasn’t sure if Mrs Taplow meant half of eight which would actually be half past seven! Finally, Ivan twiddled with his watch, put the hands to 8.30 and showed it to Mrs Taplow.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Taplow.

‘Yes,’ chimed Tatiana and Svitochka triumphantly.

‘We will meet you on the back road by the railway station at half past eight.’

‘Yes, tank you, tank you.’

Perspiring beneath her stiff blue hat and with a ‘come on Trevor,’ Mrs Taplow pirouetted clumsily on her stout navy shoes and swept imperiously out the gate.

That evening at Number 17, over stuffed peppers and tomatoes, Tatiana said to Ivan, in their native Russian.

‘Wasn’t that lady nice – and that young boy? Very good manners.’

‘Goody, goody, I have someone to play with,’ piped up Svitochka. ‘And he really liked the frog!’ Svitochka shivered as she remembered the flash of bright green, leaping so high, from between the clods of earth.

‘A frog is a very good sign,’ said Tatiana. ‘In my country, a frog in the garden means plenty of money and riches coming into the house.’ Tatiana had seen an expensive raincoat in John Martin’s for Svitochka, and a lovely dress for herself. She was just about to say this when Ivan interrupted.

‘Ah good. We will need a lot more money coming in so that we can buy Svitochka’s schoolbooks.’ He was worried and felt a little out of his depth with this big new house. He was digging up the front lawn to plant potatoes. As a boy in Odessa his family had avoided starvation by growing their own food. This experience, the first of many such experiences, served to inculcate within him the injunction that he always had to prepare for the worst.

Tatiana felt deflated. Although she was pleased to have her own house, she wanted pretty clothes too. She had been through such an austere time in her young life. Here she was in the land of plenty and she wanted it all. Her heroines were Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe. She wanted to be like them, and had dyed her hair blonde. She sighed as she dipped a piece of pepper and meat into the delicious sauce she had made from fresh tomatoes, onions, and garlic, purchased from the market. The Rosella tomato sauce which Svitochka had nearly vomited over stayed in the cupboard. They couldn’t understand why Australians seemed to love something that looked like bright red glue.

Further up the road at Number 35 over lamb chops and boiled vegetables, Mrs Taplow said to Mr Taplow, ‘Well we went and did our duty today and said hello to the New Australians down the road.’

‘Very nice dear,’ said Mr Taplow, lobbing dollops of Rosella tomato sauce all over his chops. He was tired. He had spent a large part of the day sorting out a big mess in the cold room at the back of the canteen. His head pounded.

‘Very strange people though. Hardly know any English. The little girl, what’s her name, Switokker or some such silly name, seems okay – a bit wild. But you know that wonderful lawn that old John Briggs watered so conscientiously – they’ve dug it all up. The cheek! And all those lovely roses. Mrs Briggs’ pride and joy they were. Couldn’t believe it. Just all gone. Disgraceful.’

Trevor sniggered.

‘What are you laughing at? And eat up your cabbage.’

‘That Witchky girl couldn’t even say frog properly – she was saying “flog, flog”.’

Tatiana was delighted that her new house had a bathroom. As she prepared a bath for her daughter, she told her about her girlhood where water had to be carried from the river and heated up on the wood stove. Baths were unheard of. Svitochka sank into her first ever bath, luxuriating in the hot water and wondering about that cold northern country from which they had come. She was a bit afraid of going to a new school. Would the children like her? Would they shun her like the children in Commercial Road? She was glad that Trevor and his mother were taking her. But that Mrs Taplow did scare her. She felt uncomfortable when she thought of her. Her eyes were cold, dead even. She was ruminating for so long that the water became tepid. As she started to get out she looked at her hands and feet. They were all wrinkled.

‘Mama, mama,’ she screamed. ‘I’m getting old.’ Tatiana came in and teased her.

‘Yes, you are. Old and wrinkled. Just like Baba Yaga.’

‘Oh no,’ cried Svitochka, recoiling at the thought of that wrinkled hag who was every Russian child’s nightmare. ‘I can’t possibly go to school looking so old.’

Next morning, Svitochka, relieved that her hands looked young again, waited on the back road and saw Mrs Taplow and Trevor walking towards her. Tatiana had plaited coloured ribbons into her hair and insisted she wore boots and long trousers in case she caught cold.

‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Taplow, casting a disapproving glance over the clothes.

They’ll have to go, she thought. And as for that silly hair – makes her look like a peasant!

Svitochka looked at Mrs Taplow’s forced smile and saw something in her eyes that made her cringe. But she skipped ahead with Trevor, her plaits swinging from side to side. When they reached the Philips Factory gates, they turned left into a narrow lane that skirted its perimeter. Behind a barbed wire fence were untidy piles of pipes and rusting machinery; detritus of the lapsed munitions factory. On the other side of the lane were the back fences of the houses on the continuation of Pudney Street. Svitochka jumped in fright as a dozen bulldogs rushed at the fence, snarling and snapping.

‘Oh, don’t worry – they belong to old Mr Craxton. They won’t escape.’ They walked on past dilapidated asbestos chicken coops, a few more houses and empty blocks, until they reached Tapley’s Hill Road. This was a main road that connected the south coastal area of Adelaide to Port Adelaide. And even in 1952 there was a steady stream of cars. Svitochka reluctantly held Mrs Taplow’s hand as she crossed over. Down another small street, and there it was, her new school. Her heart was in her mouth as she went through the front gate.