Читать книгу It's Okay You're Not Married - Rosalind Dorrington ( Amelia Williams) - Страница 12

Jenny started to come to school with a lot of pocket money to spend and she confided in me that her mother had encouraged her to sneak into her father’s bedroom whilst he was in a drunken stupor and she would pinch his wage packet. For her efforts, Jenny’s mother would give her five pounds (ten dollars). Well, that’s what Jenny had told me! Looking back with hindsight, I would say that in all probability Jenny had withheld the money from her poor mother or she just pinched it for herself and her Mother got nothing.

Jenny would quite often buy me gifts which I could never let Edith see, so I would hide them in a little hiding spot in the paddock. After the wagging incident, I was forbidden to see Jenny after school and I wasn’t supposed to associate with her at school either, however, whenever I could, I’d go over to Jenny’s house, mainly on Sunday afternoons.

Her father wouldn’t allow me inside the house, to be honest I don’t think he allowed anyone past the front door so Jenny and I made a secret signal. Whenever I walked past her house, I’d whistle the tune Stand Up and Fight from the operetta Carmen. Then, when I knew for sure that she’d heard me, we’d meet over in the park, where we’d smoke her mother’s cigarettes and make eyes at the boys. A couple of times, we went along with Nancy and Quinn and met up with other kids from the area. We’d go to a secluded swimming hole at the foothills of Mt Coot-tha and go skinny-dipping. It was a little area directly behind Anzac Park. It was a beautiful place, a real Shangri-La in a rainforest under the noses of everybody however, it went undiscovered for years. Eventually, the Brisbane City Council discovered it and they built a planetarium and car park there with a freeway alongside of it. They threw water lilies into our lagoon and called it a lily pond. So much for progress, personally speaking I preferred it the way it was.

On one of the occasions after we’d been skinny-dipping, we all congregated in Anzac Park to have a feed of chips lollies and drinks and of course a couple of smokes. We’d been there for about half an hour and we were just about ready to pack up and go home when we heard a distant roar and someone exclaimed, ‘Oh shit, it’s the cops.’

We all looked over and saw the police bike with the side basher approaching. The cigarettes were stubbed out and all the cigarettes including the butts were hidden as fast as was humanly possible. We were all very surprised and pleased to see a new cop to the area, and not the old pig we called Baby Face who was hated by everyone. This cop was blonde, blue eyed, good-looking and had the cheekiest smile. I doubt that any of us stood in fear of this handsome specimen of manhood. He stopped the motor of his bike and asked us, what we were doing.

Quinn ‘Having a party, do you want to join us?’

He smiled and all the girls just about melted.

Police Officer ‘No thanks but it’s nice of you to ask.’

He then asked us our names and we told him. I couldn’t believe my ears

Quinn ‘More importantly, what’s your name?’

Police Officer ‘Constable Potlick’

We all burst into gales of laughter.

Quinn ‘Potlick?’‘Which pot do you lick the one on the stove or the one under the bed?’

That was it for me, I was in fits. He laughed, and because I was still having a good chortle, he turned to me ‘Well, Amelia, you seem to be enjoying yourself, perhaps you can tell me why your hair is wet.’ I was struck dumb momentarily, but fortunately I came up with, ‘We had a water fight.’ He then asked where the water was and once again, I was floundering for an answer. Fortunately, Quinn saved my bacon by pointing to the far side of the park and proclaimed, ‘There’s a tap over there.’

We all knew he didn’t believe that, but he didn’t question us anymore. He chatted with us for about ten minutes and left. We never went skinny-dipping again for fear of being caught by the cops. I was only twelve/thirteen at the time and very naive in many ways, but if I was older, I wouldn’t have objected if Constable Potlick had’ve caught me naked.

Quite a few years ago I was watching a television talk show and I was reminded of my own teenage years. The show had four teenage girls and their mothers, the mothers were complaining about how un-lady-like and uncouth their daughters were. Each girl behaved like ill-mannered Neanderthal cave women. They chewed gum like cows chewing their cud, spoke in loud voices and sat with their legs spread wide open, in the most un-lady-like manner. Although I was nowhere near as bad as these young girls, I know that I was aware of my unusual behaviour at their age of twelve to fifteen. So much so, that I was almost convinced that I was schizophrenic.

I thoroughly enjoyed dressing in widgie style clothing, which was classified as being totally unacceptable. Olivia Newton John gave a certain amount of respectability to the trashy widgie style in the movie Grease twenty years later, but in the fifties, it wasn’t classified as respectable. Nice young girls didn’t wear their hair with a kiss curl on their foreheads, nor did they wear tight peddle-pushers and skin tight sweaters. Any girl that did,was regarded as being a tart. On the other hand, I also enjoyed dressing up to the nines, wearing a conservative style dress, stockings, patent leather shoes and gloves. The contrast was so striking I could only liken it to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

I remember going to a rock and roll picture at the Wintergarden with Jenny and we were flicking cigarette ash on the heads of the two young fellows who were sitting in front of us. Both Jenny and I were swearing like troopers and trying to act really tough.

The boys were inoffensive young chaps who were trying to be nice to us and we treated them with utter contempt. We just wanted to be anti-social little misfits. The following week, I went to see a love story movie at the Rex picture theatre in Fortitude Valley on my own, dressed up to the nines. I sat in the darkened theatre and behaved in the manner as I was dressed, like a well-behaved, good-mannered, young lady. The lights went on during interval and I nearly died a thousand deaths when I recognised one of the young fellows from the previous week. He came over to where I was sitting

Boy ‘Hello, don’t I know you?’

I replied in my best elocution voice,

Amelia ‘I don’t think so.’

He looked directly at me

Boy ‘I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere.’

I put my nose in the air with all the haughtiness of a stuck-up little prig

Amelia ‘I’m sure I’d remember you.’

I gave him a coy, little smile, and all of a sudden his face dropped open like a mineshaft Boy ‘You’re the one who sat behind me last week.’

I shook my head as if I had no idea what he was talking about.

Boy ‘I can’t believe how different you look it’s as if you’re two different people.’

I couldn’t contain myself any longer, I just burst into laughter. We sat and talked for a few minutes until the second feature. On leaving the theatre at the end of the film, I was as pleased as punch with myself that I had made someone else as confused about my changeable behaviour as I was.

Towards the end of our last year at school, I thought it was time to be honest with Edith and Mum. So, one night at the pictures instead of sneaking off to the toilets for a smoke I lit one whilst sitting between them. It was an eerie feeling having two pairs of eyes peering at me in disbelief. They never said one word. I guess sitting in a darkened theatre wasn’t the time or place to throw a multi-coloured fit.

I would have liked to tell the mothers on that television show to try not to despair and to try not to force them to conform. The girls probably won’t outgrow their tomboyish behaviour, but I feel sure that they will eventually modify their behaviour somewhat as time goes by. I think that they’ll never be wilting wallflowers and never be afraid to speak up for themselves. Probably to everyone else’s horror.

Jenny began sneaking out of a night time and meeting older boys whom we had talked to at in the park on our Sunday afternoon meetings. The fellows were members of a motorcycle club and were all in their late teens. Jenny’s reputation went from bad to worse and unfortunately, I heard rumours that I too was being branded as a low-class moll as well, all because I was her friend. I disapproved of Jenny’s night time activities as much as everyone else did. I ended up having a big argument with her and I told her that if she wanted to lower herself to that level that it was her prerogative to do so. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to be dragged through the mud with her.

Mother Mathias had been transferred to another school about two years after I started at the catholic school but she had donated her lethal weapon to Mother Romanus, a thick rubber strap which was actually a strip off the floor covering from the church. It was approximately eight inches long and two inches wide and was as thick as two wooden rulers glued together. Anyone who got hit with it would remember it for the rest of their lives. I had copped it for spreading the story about my classmate’s father committing suicide and on several other occasions. On my last day of school, I snuck into Mother Romanus’ classroom and took the offensive weapon from her desk. I did what every kid in the school had wanted to do with it. I cut it into very tiny pieces and took it back and placed all the pieces back in her desk. I am very proud of that achievement, I believe I prevented a lot of kids a great deal of suffering. As a last act of defiance, three or four of us climbed up to the big church bell and pulled the rope to make it toll our happiness of our first taste of freedom.

In retrospect, looking back at my childhood, I was considerably lucky really. I had all the opportunities any child could ever want. I found out months later that Jenny fell pregnant and because of her age she had been taken through the courts. She refused to give the names of the fellows she had slept with but the police had charged some chaps with carnal knowledge. Their solicitors proved in court that she had accepted cigarettes and a bottle of Coca-Cola during their liaisons with her and she was proven to be a prostitute for accepting these items as payments. Jenny gave birth to a baby boy the following November and the baby was adopted out.

Hannah had arranged for me to work at Barry and Robert’s Supermarket in the city during the Christmas holidays. My job entailed filling the shelves when the stock started to get low and being a general dog’s body. My main memory of my six weeks working there was wearing a grey and red uniform that was at least two sizes too big for me. Being only five feet tall, I’ve always had problems getting clothes to fit me and Barry’s uniform department was no different. Co-workers and customers alike often had a good laugh at seeing me scampering around in a uniform that should have only reached below my knees but instead it flowed around my ankles. At the end of my six weeks I had become quite attached to everyone who worked there, not to mention becoming attached to my wage every week.

On Dad’s insistence, even though he was no longer living at home, I was enrolled at Stott’s Business College in the city to learn typing, shorthand, and business principles. As with piano playing, the keys on a typewriter were absolutely impossible for me to master. The harder I tried, the more agitated I became, the more agitated I became the more my hands sweated. The result being a soggy mess everywhere, three months of that form of torture was more than enough for me. So much to my parent’s dismay, I beat a hasty retreat and got a job as a shop assistant at Penny’s Department store. I was put in charge of the toy department, which was second only to being in charge of the lollies and chocolate department. In those days the toy department was like a little house separated from the rest of the other departments. All the counters were around the entire length of the four walls with the exception of the three doorways to allow the customers to enter. The area between the counters was supposedly for the customers to walk around to look at the goods on display. It was nothing unusual for me to be on the floor on all fours crawling around playing with different toys. Of course, if I was copped by the floorwalker Mr Mac (as he was affectionately known), I would invariably come up with the story that some naughty kid had been playing with it earlier and I thought the kid had broken it and I was just testing it out. Toys weren’t wrapped in boxes with cellophane or plastic in those days.

I’ll never forget the day I saw a little boy of about nine put a dinky car in his pocket. I rang the bell on top of the cash register three times for Mr Mac but to no avail, he didn’t hurry in as he was supposed to. I was pacing up and down behind the counter trying to pretend to be unaware of what the boy had done. I nearly had heart seizure when I saw him walk towards the door to leave the area. I walked up to him and grabbed him by the arm and told him he was under arrest. The poor little bugger almost shit himself with fright. Just as I had made the arrest Mr Mac walked in

Mr Mac ‘What’s the problem, Amelia?’

Amelia ‘I’ve just arrested this kid for shoplifting; he’s got the stuff in his pocket.’

I announced as proud as punch,

Mr Mac looked at me in total disbelief and shock. Slowly he turned to the terrified kid and very quietly said, ‘Do you want to show me what’s in your pockets, son?’

The little boy hesitantly emptied his pockets and to my surprise he had a bag of marbles, a pocketknife and two dinky cars. Mr Mac took the goods and placed them on the shelf behind the counter and asked the lad to accompany him outside the toy department. As they walked out, I started to follow but Mr Mac stopped me by telling me that it wasn’t necessary for me to go with them. I was surprised and somewhat annoyed that I was going to miss out on all the action. A few minutes later Mr Mac walked back in and he was furious. He took a deep breath,

Mr Mac ‘Never do that again.’

Amelia ‘Why not?’

Mr Mac ‘If that boy had’ve known the law, we would’ve been in big trouble. When I asked him if he’d like to empty his pockets all he had to say was ‘no’ and then he could’ve gone home, told his mother and she could sue us all for wrongful arrest and assault.’

He went on to explain that, two floorwalkers had to witness a person taking two things. He made me promise that if I ever saw anyone stealing again that I would ring for assistance and wait and let the floorwalker’s deal with it.

It wasn’t long after that incident I was transferred to the lolly and chocolate department and more importantly I was put in charge of the drink machine. I had it made.

I had a regular customer who came in every day without fail. She was what we would call a bag lady these days. She wore the same clothes every day with a fawn coloured lightweight overcoat, rain, hail or shine. Over her straggly peroxide hair, she wore a huge black brimmed hat adorned with flowers and black netting. On her arm she carried an extremely large, black handbag. Every day at about eleven o’clock she’d march hurriedly down the aisle of the shop from the Adelaide Street entrance and slam a one shilling piece (ten cents) onto the silver topped counter and yell at top note at me, ‘Two ginger beers.’ As soon as I poured them for her, she would throw them down her throat in rapid succession, then slam the disposable cups down onto the counter and she’d march away. I tried to make conversation with her a couple of times, but to no avail, she did not or would not respond. The poor old chook totally fascinated me.

One morning whilst working at the drink machine, word filtered through the shop that Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valance had all been killed in a plane crash. Within minutes, there were teenagers ten deep, milled around the record counter, all of them were weeping and wailing whilst the staff played their dead hero’s music over the loud speakers. I can remember thinking at the time that they were all nuts. I couldn’t for the life of me, understand why anyone could weep and wail for people they had never met, let alone seen. I still can’t understand it. I feel saddened by something like that, and I get tears in my eyes at hearing sad news, but to weep hysterically and wail over someone you don’t know. Not me, I think those people, must live boring meaningless lives.

Lori-Anne Bailey worked at Penny’s. She and I became friends and we began going out to dances or the movies on Friday and Saturday nights. One night we’d both been invited out to a drive-in movie with a couple of fellows whom we’d met at the Railway Institute dance on the Friday night. I can’t remember where we’d arranged to meet them, but I do know we never got to the drive-in. We were driven to a lonely deserted area on the outskirts of nowhere to a place we later learnt was called The Blunder.

We were informed by those wonderful specimens of manhood that if we didn’t come across, we could get out and walk. Both Lori-Anne and I didn’t hesitate, without even consulting the other, we both opened our doors in unison and hopped out of the car and started our long walk home. I had no idea where we were, let alone where we were heading or if we were heading in the right direction. The two fellows kept shouting abuse at us that we were prick teasers, to which I yelled into the night, ‘That’s better than being pricks like you, you rotten mongrels.’

We finally found our way out of the dense bushland area and onto an unsealed road. We were exhausted and thirsty but there wasn’t a house to be seen. After about another two hours of walking, we finally came to a darkened house and we were both too frightened to go in and ask for help. Lori-Anne said, ‘We’re passing Archerfield Aerodrome’,

I had to believe her, because she had a little bit of knowledge about the area. We could’ve been on Mars for all I knew. All I could see was a vast area of pitch black nothing. Finally, after about three hours of walking, we came to an intersection but there wasn’t any traffic to be seen. Lori-Anne said Ipswich Road was up to our left. We walked for about another ten minutes and came up to the main highway. There was still no traffic in sight and we were debating if we should continue on up to where Lori lived or to walk in the other direction to my home. Either way we were in for a long walk. Out of the blue a car pulled up alongside of us, the driver was middle aged but obviously an angel in disguise. He asked us if we were all right and we told him where we had walked from. Although I’d been warned never to accept lifts from strangers, I was secretly praying this man would invite us into his car. I asked him where he was heading and he replied, ‘Ipswich.’ My heart sank because I didn’t want to go to Lori-Anne’s house which was on the way to Ipswich, I wanted to get home to my own bed. But most of all I wanted to see my family. Lori-Anne was supposed to be spending the night at my place and I sensed she too didn’t want to go to her place probably because she’d have to answer too many questions from her parents. The man then asked us where we were going and dejectedly, I told him where I lived.

Without even hesitating he said, ‘Get in I’ll drive you home.’

It was after one in the morning before we finally crawled into bed. Fortunately, everyone was in bed asleep when we got home. I knew I wouldn’t have gotten any sympathy from Edith if she’d seen the state we were in. We were absolutely filthy our legs were almost black from the bush and we had cobbler’s pegs all over our clothes. As far as Edith was concerned, she thought I was a defiant little bugger who went out looking for trouble. Funnily enough for some inexplicable reason, she honestly believed, that because I was going out with a girl from work, that I was safe from harm. Ironically had she known that Lori-Anne lived at Inala, I wouldn’t have been allowed to associate with her because Inala had a reputation for being a bad place. It still hasn’t lost that stigma. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

After that night though, Lori-Anne and I never went out together again. I have no idea why not. Perhaps I subconsciously blamed her and her upbringing for getting me into that situation. I honestly don’t know why. I also don’t know why I had an uncanny knack of getting myself into difficult situations. As the old saying goes I didn’t look for trouble, it found me.