Читать книгу It's Okay You're Not Married - Rosalind Dorrington ( Amelia Williams) - Страница 10

I don’t know what it was about me that seemed to entice child molesters like bees to a honey pot. Perhaps I was extremely unlucky or there were more offenders around than what was reported. I think I was about nine when the first incident occurred. Mum, Edith and I were on our way to the Regent Theatre. I hurried off down Queen Street approximately twenty feet (three metres) in front of them, and quite a few people were walking up and down the footpath. All of a sudden, a man stopped right in front of me and as I stopped to wait for him to move away, he thrust his hand fast and hard between my legs and squeezed hard. I was momentarily stunned beyond belief and I screamed as loud as I could and he let go and ran across the road towards Albert Street before Mum and Edith were able to reach me.

The second incident happened when I was about twelve. We were about the last ones inside the Metro theatre, and there weren’t three seats available together and we were scattered in three different rows of seats. We were only a few feet from each other, my seat was the second seat from the aisle, there was a man sitting on the end of the row closest to the aisle on my left-hand side. Edith was approximately six seats along, but in the row directly behind and Mum was approximately three seats down but five rows back from me. The lights went off in the theatre and I felt the man’s leg rub against mine, I moved my leg slightly and in doing so I smiled at him as if to say, no offence. The movie started and I became engrossed in the plot and the next thing I felt something go up my skirt and touch me on the leg and at the same time, I became aware that his right arm was around my shoulders. I jumped up and screamed, ‘Mum, this man’s touching me.’ The fellow took off up the aisle like a bat out of hell. The picture stopped, the theatre lights went on and Mum and Edith must’ve flown with wings on their heels to get to me as quickly as they did. The guy had disappeared and the usherettes shifted the patrons around to allow Mum, Edith and I to sit together and we tried to settle down to watch the rest of the picture.

The third incident happened not long after that, I was walking down the street behind our house toward the paddock. I was just about to go through the paddock into our street when a hand touched me on the shoulder from behind, I turned around expecting to see a familiar face and I saw a man about my father’s age. I looked directly at his face and enquired, ‘Yes?’ He never said a word but he had this peculiar look on his face and he glanced downward. I followed his glance and I saw he had his penis in his hand. I said very disgustedly, ‘Oh put it away its bloody ugly and so are you ya, dirty old bastard.’ He turned and walked away and I ran as fast as I could through the paddock. I saw the same man about twenty-five years later when I was at the R.S.L. club with my father.

Amelia ‘Dad, do you know that man over there?’

Dad ‘Yes, he’s a mongrel.’

Amelia ‘Why?’

Dad ‘He’s just no good he’s a bad devil that’s why. Why do you ask?’

Amelia ‘I very rarely forget a face, Dad, and I’ll never forget his as long as I live, he’s the one who flashed himself at me in the street years ago.’

Dad looked at me and his eyes flashed a look of death, kill and maim.

Dad ‘Are you sure, darling?’

With as much confidence as any person could possibly have.

Amelia ‘I’d swear on any Bible in any court of law throughout the land.’

I looked back to where the fellow had been sitting and he had gotten up and was walking out the club through the back door. It was obvious he had recognised me and he knew I had recognised him. Nothing more was ever said about the fellow and I don’t know if Dad said anything to him or if he ever dared to go back to the club after that day.

I had a big crush on Lloyd Rivers; he was so good-looking his hair was so blonde it was almost white. His father and Dad were fairly good friends, both had been in the war and they used to drink together at the Regatta pub. It was nothing unusual for Mr Rivers to put on a party for no apparent reason and half of the suburb would be there. It makes me wonder now how anyone could afford to throw a party in those days especially the Rivers, they weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Mrs Rivers used to work at Edward’s school as a cleaner to help pay the bills. In those days women with children very rarely went out to work unless their husbands were unable to. There were seven kids in the Rivers family the three eldest ones were older than James but still living at home. Rodney whose nickname was Ooie was Edward’s age, Edward and I didn’t like him but we used to tolerate him for Dad’s sake. Lloyd was my age possibly a few months older. Trevor and Gilbert (Gillie) were the funniest set of twins you could ever meet they were about three years younger than me. Quite often Jenny and I would meet up with Lloyd and the twins and some of Lloyd’s schoolmates at the swings in the park. Other girls would join us and before too long there’d be a swag of us kids running around like lunatics.

We were always aware that Mrs McCaully lived across the street so we’d be shouting out to her to pull her bloody head in away from the closed curtains. It wasn’t unusual for us to go over the far side of the football oval where there were huge sewerage pipes, which had been there for years waiting for someone to put them into the ground. We’d all hide in the pipes and smoke, talk, and tell dirty yarns. A few times, but alas only a few we’d pair off and have a kissing and cuddling session. All very innocent stuff, but of course that was enough for me to believe I was going to marry Lloyd when we got older. Unfortunately, the kissing and cuddling sessions were very short lived because Trevor and Gillie would always come looking for us and tell us that they wanted to be kissed as well. They were always saying and doing something really funny. Both of them were born comedians and I don’t think there was a kid within a five-mile radius (six and a half kilometres) who didn’t like them.

During the Christmas holidays in 1955, I visited Gabrielle, one of my school friends, at her home. I met Greg a young fellow who was on holidays staying with relatives living down the street from Gabrielle. We got on like a house on fire and Edward came to meet him the following day and we went crabbing in the Brisbane River. I had never caught a crab in my life before, but I had often eaten them when Dad had brought them home for Edith to cook. All told we caught about six of the delicious treats on the riverbank Opposite Park Road. We had had a bit of difficulty putting the twine around their claws, but with a bit of perseverance we managed to get five tied up. We divvyed them up in hessian bags three to Greg with two in another bag for us. The three of us were trying to get a good grip on the last one, which was the biggest one of all. The crab started to thrash about and Edward kept saying, ‘Watch out that it doesn’t toss its nipper.’ So, muggins me, tried to wind the twine around it’s nipper as fast as I could. My hands were slimy with mud and I think my hand slid along the nipper and the big mongrel of a thing latched onto the little finger of my left hand with one gigantic crunch. The pain that seared through my hand was excruciating I thought as sure as eggs it had chomped through the bone. I was screeching in agony and Edward and Greg were panicking not knowing what to do.

Edward ‘For Christ’s sake throw your arm upward and you’ll be able to flip the cunt of a thing off.’

He had yelled over my voice.as I screamed at him,

Amelia ‘I can’t move my arm, ya stupid bastard, it’s too sore.’

Greg got hold of the crab and started to jab at it with Edward’s hunting knife, which only seemed to make it crunch harder. By this time, I was almost beside myself with worry and agony, not knowing what to do and thinking I was going to have one less finger on my left hand. Edward yelled instructions to Greg to jab the crab in its eyes and after a few good pokes in its eyeballs the crab let go of my finger. There was blood everywhere and I was sure that I would lose my finger. I was very lucky, the finger was a bit mangled but I didn’t even go to the doctor, but I’m positive I should have had at least one stitch in it.

I learnt a valuable lesson that day, don’t ever go crabbing, just buy them from the fish shop already dead and cooked.

A couple of weeks or so later I decided to experiment with Dad’s razor by shaving my legs for the first time. I have no idea why I wanted to shave my legs, because I have very fine, fair hair on my arms and legs which can’t even be seen. But I had to be grown-up and I shaved my arms as well. I was quite pleased with myself at doing such a great job and I sat in the bath admiring my handiwork. All of a sudden, I felt a stinging sensation on the lower part of the back of my left leg. I lifted my leg out of the water and the blood began to flow freely. Dad always kept a packet of Tally-Ho cigarette papers in his shaving cabinet for when he nicked his skin when he shaved. I dried my hands and grabbed the papers and placed one over the cut. I might as well not have bothered because no sooner had I placed it on the cut, the paper was a red sodden mess.

I tried again and again and by this time my hands were dripping with perspiration as I desperately tried to stem the blood flow. I managed to wrap a small gauze bandage around it dried myself and got dressed. I limped out to Edith and told her a story that I had climbed through a barbed wire fence earlier in the day whilst trying to pat a horse and the bath water had knocked the scab off the wound. I was rushed to the doctor and was given a tetanus needle because horses and barbed wire fences were a lethal combination for tetanus.

Serves me right, I had outsmarted myself once again.

The following August, Edward and I went to the Brisbane Exhibition (known by Queenslanders as ‘The Ekka’) on the last Saturday to buy heaps of sugar cane from the fruit pavilion. The farmers sold their fruit and vegetable displays to the public very cheaply and the giant stalks of sugar cane were broken into approximately two-foot lengths. I sat on the front steps attacking one piece of the juicy cane trying to take the skin off but to no avail. I went under the house in search of one of my grandfather’s gardening implements and discovered his machete.

Back up onto the steps, I very gingerly gave the sugarcane a couple of whacks but the cane kept rolling around as soon as I hit it. I held the cane in my left hand and gave it a bit of a tap and I managed to split the skin slightly. I sucked at the juice and it was sheer bliss tasting that sweet nectar. I was spurred on to give the piece of cane a harder whack. This time I lifted the machete higher and plunged it down harder, it broke the skin all right unfortunately it was the skin on my hand.

You’d be correct if you guessed that it was the little finger of my left hand. Once again, I was extremely lucky the machete wasn’t very sharp but it mangled my finger almost in the same place that the crab had crunched. I was beginning to get the feeling God was trying to tell me something and I made a momentous decision that the third time would be unlucky and I decided to be more careful in the future.

One night about two weeks before Guy Fawkes Night in 1956, with Edith’s permission, I went for a walk with Hannah over to the shops near the railway station in search of crackers. By the time we got there, the shop that sold them was closed. We walked all the way back to the shops near the local picture theatre to see if any of the shops there were still open. We bought quite a few for the money we had and we walked up the hill towards our homes. As we walked over the crest of the hill, I noticed a pale green F. J. Holden it was the same make and model as my father’s car. Very casually Hannah said, ‘There’s your father’s car across the road.’ By this time, we had walked past it and I looked back and said, ‘No, it’s not Dad’s car but it’s like it though, isn’t it?’‘It is your father’s car.’ Hannah insisted. We kept walking and we got to the bottom of the hill and around the corner. The next thing a car came screaming around the corner practically on two wheels and came to a screeching stop. The door flew open

Dad ‘You, get in the car.

I was shocked

Amelia ‘Can Hannah come too?’

Without even looking at her,

Dad ‘Get in.’

We practically flew down the street around the corner and up our street in deathly silence except for the roar of the car’s motor. Hannah ran to her house and Dad hurried me up the stairs. Edith came out to see what the commotion was

Dad yelled, ‘I found her wandering the bloody streets.’

He looked at his watch

Dad ‘It’s twenty to ten she should’ve been in bed hours ago.’

Edith went to say something and he interrupted her and said, ‘I’m going out, I’ll see you about her later.’

With that he turned and took off in a flurry and flew down the street in the car and disappeared around the corner. I was expecting Edith to go off the brain at me. Instead she very calmly listened to my explanation. I think I must’ve gone over the exact events of the evening about ten times. I gave her the exact location where I thought I saw Dad’s car and she queried over and over about Hannah insisting that it was Dad’s car. The following night Edith got dressed in an olive-green blouse and black skirt and flat-heeled shoes. Aunty Lilly turned up in similar dark clothing and they both left with torches in their hands. They arrived back about an hour or so later. They had gone past the house and Dad’s car was parked in the side street. Edith had crept up alongside and as she got closer, she could see two people sitting in the car. She shone the torch through the open window and saw an olive-skinned woman with dark hair pulled off her face as if she wore it in a bun at the back of her head. According to Edith she had a long beak of a nose. Apparently, Dad said to the woman something that sounded like, ‘Wind the window up, lambie.’

Edith ‘What right have you got, to take a man away from his wife and children?

The woman ‘It depends on the age of the children.’

I forget what else was said, but Aunty Lilly and Edith didn’t stay there very long and they came straight back home. Uncle Simon told us later that the affair had gone on for nearly ten years. This meant that I was only two when he started going out with her. None of us wanted to have anything to do with him, as far as we were all concerned, he was already finished. James and Edward wanted to kill him. Edith had been humiliated in the worst possible way and she didn’t deserve that at all. She’d been a good wife and mother all those years and he had treated her with utter contempt. To make matters worse only a few months before, he had told Mum and Granddad that they had to leave the house and find their own place to live and that had shattered me. They had lived with us since before the war and I felt as if my world was being torn apart when they left. They moved into a flat about five minutes walking distance from our house, but it wasn’t the same. I had pleaded with them to take me with them, but I wasn’t allowed to go. Three months later they bought a house, they had only been there two weeks when the flat that they’d occupied burnt to the ground from an electrical fault.

I continued going to school for another twelve months and Edith had to find a job to support us all. She hadn’t gone to work for an employer for more than twenty years. She had no skills and no formal education but she took what employment she could find. She got a job as a milk bar attendant in Chemist Roush’ soda fountain parlour, at the top of Queen Street, Brisbane. That suited me down to the ground, I loved lime sodas and strawberry malted milks and I’d go into town to see her at work as often as I could.

Years later on 60 Minutes there was a story about a heroic nurse who had served in Egypt during WW11, she had a similar sounding name to the woman Dad had had the affair with. I’ll go to my grave believing that she was Dad’s girlfriend.

Edith had often said to me, when I’d been particularly cheeky or naughty, ‘You’re in for a rude awakening one of these days, young lady.’ I’d been sleeping in her bed and I awoke one morning to see her standing in the bedroom with only her panties on. She was bent over putting her bra on and her breasts were swinging like pendulums. I bit my tongue as the thought went through my mind, this must be the rude awakening she’s been talking about for years.

As Dad wasn’t around, I figured my chances of getting a belting was fairly high, if I’d said it to her. So, I kept my mouth shut just for once in my life.