Читать книгу It's Okay You're Not Married - Rosalind Dorrington ( Amelia Williams) - Страница 5

Aunty Amy and Uncle Jacob had two daughters, Diane and May. Uncle Simon who was divorced had a daughter, Jean who lived with her mother Flora. I can only vaguely recall meeting Flora and Jean when I was very young. Mum’s brother Uncle Clive and his wife Denise had Betty, Bert and Nigel. Dad’s half-sister Aunty Marge had two daughters, Joan and Yvonne by her first marriage. (Quite a few years later Aunty Marge married her second husband Michael they had a son, Simon, whom I’ve never met). As Joan and Yvonne lived in Sydney, I didn’t get to meet them until we were adults.

Dad’s mother, whom we all called Ninny, would visit us at least once a year and she’d tell us all about Joan and Yvonne. Ninny used to tell me that Yvonne was her favourite granddaughter, when I eventually did get to meet Yvonne, I learnt that Ninny used to tell Yvonne that I was her favourite granddaughter. Yvonne admitted to me that she had hated me because Ninny had said that I was her favourite granddaughter, funnily enough both Yvonne and I recognised many similar idiosyncrasies we both had.

Ninny had a rather perverse habit of showing me her closed fist whenever she thought I was being naughty. In doing so, she would point to her knuckles and say, ‘See them dead babies?’ Mummy would almost reel in horror whenever she heard that.

I didn’t see Diane and May very often, but I liked them both. They were (and still are) nice girls, I was always on my best behaviour with them. Diane is James age and May is a couple of years younger than me. My fondest memory of Diane is going over to stay at their house one weekend. She painted my fingernails and put make-up on me and I thought I looked absolutely beautiful. I fondly remember playing dress ups with May whenever she and Aunty Amy came to visit us and we’d sit under the big mango tree where I’d pour cordial from the teapot of my kitchen tea set. We ate buttered arrowroot biscuits and Vegemite, peanut paste and strawberry jam sandwiches.

So, there were rare occasions when I behaved like a civilised human child.

‘Aunty’ Dot and ‘Uncle’ Stan had known Dad for many years. Aunty Dot had gone to the same school as Dad, she was only about four feet, eleven inches (one hundred and forty-eight centimetres) tall and Uncle Stan was about five feet, six inches (one hundred and sixty-five centimetres), both were hairdressers and were a typical Darby and Joan.

Uncle Stan used to like to get into the rum a bit and Aunty Dot didn’t like him drinking so he’d hide the bottles in the garden or under the spare bed or wherever he thought she’d never find it. Whenever I’d go around to their place, she’d whisper to me, ‘See if you can find them love.’ She’d give me sixpence (five cents) to buy an ice cream and I’d be in my glory looking under anything and everything. I’d fossick in drawers and cupboards and as soon as I’d find a bottle, I’d race in to tell her. She’d get hold of the bottle, look at how much was there she’d pour half into the sink and top it up with water and put the bottle back in its hiding place. It was on one of these seek and find missions that I found heaps of MAN magazines with various other Post, Pix and Women’s Weekly magazines in their spare room. I told James and Edward about the MAN magazines with the nude ladies in them and they both came to visit Aunty Dot the next time I went there. I had to innocently ask Aunty Dot if we could go and read the books with the cartoons in them in the spare room. She patted my face and said, ‘Of course you all can, sweetheart.’

We all ripped into some good educational perving at what ladies looked like without their clothes on. I adored Aunty Dot and Uncle Stan they were the loveliest couple you could ever wish to meet.

My mother’s mother and father lived with us in the big colonial house in a quiet street as did my father's brother Simon. James had not been able to say the word grandma as a little boy and he called her Mama. When Edward and I were born we carried on the tradition but over the years the word was shortened to Mum. Everyone else in the house except James and Edward called my mother Edith, and I guess at the time I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t as well.

Mum and Granddad were as different as chalk and cheese they were both very hard working. Granddad had owned his own slaughter yards when Edith was a little girl. He had bought all the land for one thousand pounds (two thousand dollars) and had sold it ten years later for the same amount when the abattoirs were introduced. The land was eventually subdivided some forty years later by a large real estate company who named the estate, The Wongabell Estate at Kenmore. Anyone who is familiar with that area will no doubt think that my grandfather was not much of a businessman. The area is now and has been for many years one of the most sought-after areas in Brisbane. Actually, he wasn’t really a bad businessman he had a thriving little butcher shop, in spite of the number of people who owed him for their meat supply.

Mum and Granddad were softies and could never see anyone go without, but this didn't amount to a hill of beans to the abattoirs. When the abattoirs became compulsory, Granddad, along with many other butchers during those days, went bankrupt. Granddad didn’t give up trying to make it big in the business world, he leased a shop in Adelaide Street, Brisbane but that failed so he leased another in George Street just around the corner from the city’s police station.

Because his surname was Ireland, he got the idea of decorating the shop with shamrocks to encourage all the Irish police to be his customers. Even in those days the bagmen were in force. The cops would hand their Gladstone bags over the counter and expect Granddad to fill it to overflowing and most of them forgot to pay.

His opposition in those days was a fellow by the name of Scarborough so Granddad erected a sign outside his shop,

DON'T GO TO SCARBOROUGH,

YOU'LL GET TAKEN BY A SHARK.

Granddad never seemed to me to be a humorous sort of person, except when he was drunk but then he wasn't trying to be funny. The shamrocks and the play on words of the other butcher's surname proved he did have a side to him that I never saw. I personally think the funniest thing about my grandfather was his name. Rupert John Thomas Paulston Hayford Hallwell Ireland. What made it even funnier is the fact that he was born on Saint Patrick's Day and the name Patrick never got a mention. To add more humour to it, everyone called him Jock.

I would have loved to have been at Mum and Granddad’s wedding just to hear the minister say, ‘Do you Rupert Frank Thomas Paulston Hayford Hallwell Ireland take Maisy Leggott as your lawful wedded wife?’

She and Granddad arrived in Australia in 1912 on their honeymoon. Granddad had become so ill he had to be hospitalised for nine months with some mysterious illness. Mum had to find work by scrubbing floors to pay for his medical care. They went back to England in 1919 only to realise Queensland was where they wanted to stay for the rest of their lives.

My memory of Granddad is he was always working. When he wasn't going to the abattoirs that had financially crippled him, he was either going to or coming from someone else's home where he had cut their grass and/or worked odd jobs to get extra money for Mum. He used to call my grandmother Mum as well.

It was nothing unusual to see him walking along the street with a scythe over his shoulder and a hanky with a knot in each corner sitting on his head to protect his balding head from the sun.

One afternoon Edward and I were walking over to a friend’s house and we saw Granddad coming down the hill towards us. We nearly killed ourselves with laughter at the sight of him. Instead of his hanky he had about six hats on his head. Edward ran to the other side of the street to avoid being seen with him. Edward had said to me, ‘God, what’s the silly old bastard got those on his head for? Before I got the chance to reply Edward had run across the road. When Granddad got closer to me, I greeted him

‘Granddad, why are you wearing so many hats?’

Granddad ‘I had left them all at different houses and I remembered to bring them all home today.’

I felt so sorry for him both for the fact that it was a hot day and him having to walk after doing a lot of hard work, but mostly because his own grandson refused to be seen with him. A number of years later when I was a teenager and living with him and Mum. I was hurrying to catch a bus and Granddad was walking back to the house after having a couple of beers at the Regatta pub. As he approached, I remembered the incident all those years earlier. I felt a pang of guilt at the time because I hadn’t taken the time to really get to know him. I stopped and chatted with him and I can still feel his hand as he rested it on my shoulder. He looked so tired and old and the thought flashed through my mind, I wonder how much time you have left.

I became aware of a man pulling up alongside of us

Stranger ‘Are you alright, love?’

Amelia ‘Yes why?’

Stranger ‘Is that old man annoying you?’

I saw the hurt look on my grandfather's face and I wanted to scream abuse at the fellow. Instead, in my best elocution voice I said

‘This gentleman is my grandfather.’

And by Christ I was so proud of that fact I was near bursting.

I cannot leave the stories of my grandfather's scientific experiments go unmentioned. He truly believed that he should have been a scientist and was always concocting something. It was a Sunday afternoon and we had all been on a rare excursion to the beach, all of us except Granddad. On our arrival home Granddad was sitting on the front steps, he said, ‘You can’t go in there yet, I've just sprayed the place to kill all the cockies.’ After about twenty minutes Dad became very angry and started to swear and demanded entry proclaiming that no one could keep him out of his home. Granddad reluctantly unlocked the door and we all entered the house only to be almost asphyxiated by a very pungent odour. When the coughing and spluttering settled down Edith gave out an unmerciful howl and for the first time in my life, I heard her swear, ‘What have you sprayed my pots and pans with, you silly bastard?’

Granddad explained that he had concocted a formula that he knew would get rid of the cockies. Edith went off her brain showing everyone how the concoction had eaten holes in every aluminium saucepan she possessed.

Granddad was quite partial to drinking stout, but he never kept it in the refrigerator. Whenever he was asked why he kept it in the cupboard he would invariably reply,

‘It might be in Mum’s way in the fridge.’ I’ve been told unchilled stout is a fairly potent beverage so it came as no surprise that Granddad had more than a passing interest in requiring a good hangover cure.

He sat at the kitchen table one evening experimenting with a number of ingredients, no one really took any notice of what he was putting in the glass. After about an hour had passed, he announced he had successfully made a good pick-me-up. I remember noticing that the glass was filled to the top with dark brown fluid, like Worcestershire sauce. He held it up as if to make a toast and drank the entire contents in one gulp. He placed the glass down on the table and promptly passed out with his face almost embedded into the wooden tabletop. He was still in that position eight hours later.

He couldn’t remember the ingredients on his waking but we all feel certain that he would have put Castlemaine Perkins out of business if he had only been able to patent it. His favourite saying to anyone who would listen was, ‘I’m full of science.’

Dad would give me an exaggerated wink and say, ‘You’re full of something, you silly old fool.’

One night, Granddad didn’t arrive home from work and he hadn’t been seen at any of the hotels he was likely to call into to have a quick beer. After checking the hospitals etc Dad decided to go to the watch house. The cop at the gate asked Dad what name was granddad likely to be under

Dad ‘Jock Ireland.’

The Cop ‘Sorry no one here by that name, there is an Ireland but Jock’s not one of the many names this silly old bugger has given.’

Dad ‘That’s him, but don’t ask me what his full name is I wouldn't have a clue.’

The policeman laughed

The Cop ‘I thought he was having a go at me by giving a bodgie name.’

Dad was ushered down a long corridor to the cells, and to use Dad's description, ‘There was old Jock hanging on to the cell doors like Jesus Christ on the cross.’

Dad reckoned he couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the sight of him.

The Cop ‘He’s been there like that since four o’clock this afternoon and refuses to get off.’

Granddad explained later that the cell was lice infested and the other men in the cell had either urinated and/or messed their pants and he didn’t want to be contaminated by them. He had been booked for being drunk in a public place, (namely George Street, Brisbane) but he hadn’t had a drink since the night before and he was cold stone sober.

Granddad had had both of his legs badly broken in an accident many years before and had walked with a swaggering limp from that day on. The police hadn’t bothered to listen to his pleas as far as they were concerned, he was a silly old drunken fool and they were doing their duty by getting him off the street.

Mum was a born worrier and there wasn’t a day that went by she wouldn’t be worried about one of us. It was nothing unusual to hear her say as she wrung her hands together, ‘Where’s it all going to end? ’To which I would invariably reply as I grew older, ‘When we’re in our pine box.’

Looking back, I felt that we all created or at the very least over emphasised dramas solely to get her worrying. I believe now she enjoyed worrying over us and we in turn enjoyed the security of having someone as caring and loving to be there for us. Granddad would often say, ‘She’s a mighty woman.’

Mighty wasn’t the half of it, she was bloody fantastic.

Mum gave birth to three children. Cecil (1912–1987), Edith (1915–1999), and Wilfred (1916–1916), who survived seven short days. Wilfred had been a breach birth and I’ve been told in those days breach birth babies were very lucky to survive. Mum never spoke about Wilfred very often, but when she did it was always with reverence and a longing in her voice.

Mum was fifty-three when I was born and in the twenty-nine years that followed until she passed away, I think I aged her by at least eighty-five years. From as far back as I can remember she worked at two jobs for at least twenty years. From nine to five, seven days a week, she was assistant cook/kitchen hand/waitress at Mt Coot-tha Kiosk and from eleven to three, six nights a week she was a cleaner at the Wintergarden picture theatre. At least three nights a week she would indulge herself, Edith and I in an outing to the pictures. Nine times out of ten she would be out like a light before the interval. She was always very embarrassed to have fallen asleep during the picture and never failed to say when awakened,

Mum ‘I’m not asleep, I’m just resting my eyes.’

Amelia ‘You were snoring.’

Mum ‘Oh. I wasn’t, was I?’

Amelia ‘Yes, the people in the back were complaining.’

Realizing I was fibbing she'd say, ‘I may have dozed for a moment, but I was listening and I didn’t miss anything.’

Occasionally the conversation would be,

Amelia ‘Did you see the part where she fell on the stairs?’

Mum ‘No I must’ve missed that part.’

Most times when she dozed off, her head would nod forward and every so often she would nod her head back and forth as if she was agreeing with someone’s point of view.

One evening we went to Her Majesty’s Theatre to see the Ice Follies live on stage. ‘Aunty’ Lilly had accompanied us and we were engrossed in marvelling at the tremendous agility of the performers when the lady sitting next to Mum leant over and touched Aunty Lilly on the arm

Lady ‘Excuse me is this lady alright?’

We all nearly died of embarrassment and laughter as we looked at Mum who had her head tilted backwards as if she were looking at the ceiling and her mouth was wide open. Aunty Lilly nudged Mum and she awoke saying, ‘I’m not asleep, I’m just resting my eyes. I couldn’t contain myself and burst into gales of laughter. Mum, Aunty Lilly and Edith joined in much to the astonishment of everyone around us.

Mum loved to gamble, she’d have a flutter on the horses every Saturday, but most of all she loved to buy casket tickets. In those days casket tickets were like lotto tickets.

It was nothing unusual for her to go into the city on the nights we didn’t go to the pictures just to buy casket tickets from different newsagencies throughout the city. On these excursions I’d accompany her and I’d be rewarded with my favourite delights; chips, chocolates, peanuts, chewing gum, but most of all comic books. Never a week went by that I didn’t get my favourite fare. I doubt that I ever missed a copy of Archie and Jughead and Edward never missed out on his copies of The Phantom.

There was only one gift that Mum promised to buy me that she never bought, a beautiful diamante purse. It was displayed in a showcase window in the wall outside Allan and Stark’s in Queen Street. Every night when we went into the pictures or to buy the casket tickets, I’d stand in front of that window and admire that purse which to me was the ultimate in beautiful possessions. Mum would say, ‘I’ll buy it for you when you’re old enough to appreciate and look after it.’ No matter how hard I pleaded and protested I could never convince her I could look after it and appreciate it now.

Many years later

Amelia ‘You never bought me that diamante purse you promised me.’

Mum ‘You never became a diamante person. If I’d bought it for you would you have appreciated it and looked after it?’

Amelia ‘No I would’ve said what would I want this crap and left it in my duchess drawer.’

She just looked at me with her I knew that, look on her face.

Apart from being a peacemaker, diplomat and thorough lady, her other claim to fame was her cooking. No one in this world could ever bake an apple pie like Mum they made your mouth water. She could make a delicious meal out of scraps in the fridge, her fruitcakes were superb but her lunch time snack was without doubt her masterpiece. Two slices of bread, cheese and tomato on an old toaster tray which she put under the gas burner, they just melted in your mouth. I'd give my eyeteeth to eat one right now.