Roundabout at Bangalow Page 6

  He goes to school, learns his lessons well, but hates it. His name appears often in the punishment book for fighting, answering back or swearing in the playground — six of the best, the throbbing hands shaken and shaken, and then held trembling between the thighs as the lessons proceed. He has three older brothers. One is in the Light Horse in Egypt and sends home photos of himself posing with other soldiers in Cairo and Alexandria. He doesn’t mention the establishments in the Haret el Wasser in Cairo, or the riot known as the Battle of the Wazzir where the men of the AIF sack and burn the brothels and toss the burning mattresses into the street, not through moral outrage but because the prices have risen and the grog is poisonous. The AIF to a man swear that the New Zealanders did it. He does send black velvet cushion covers with the Nile at sunset on one, camels and palm trees in front of the pyramids on the other, both stencilled in silver and gold. These take pride of place in the sitting room. The two other older brothers have left school and are supposed to help his mother run the farm but they are out of control. They fight in the cowbails and flog him with a legrope when he is sent to help them after school. This family has too much spirit. The mother is nearly crazy trying to keep them and the farm together. It’s at this time, about ten years before I’m born, that she leases the farm and builds herself The Chalet, the house in the garden that plays such a joyous part in my childhood.

  This boy who will one day be my father finishes primary school and goes to Lismore on the cream lorry to sit for the QC (Qualifying Certificate), the entrance to high school. The town boys lie in ambush to flog the boys from the bush. Four of them give him a hiding before he reaches the high school gates, bruised, shaken and with an impressive nose bleed. He doesn’t pass and doesn’t care. He leaves school at twelve and at fourteen goes to work grubbing out lantana on a farm up Terania Creek for thirty bob a week and keep. Here he is working close to the Whian Whian State Forest, and brings home the staghorns, the elkhorns and bush orchids from the rainforest that his mother hangs on the tankstand on the cool and shady side of the house. He works long hours and is always hungry, for the farmer is too tight (or too poor?) to feed his own children let alone one more. He sleeps on a bag stretcher in the barn with the bedbugs and lice. When he goes home for the weekend his mother makes him strip in the paddock and boils his clothes in the copper while he bathes in the tin bath in the washhouse. Only then can he come into the house. When he goes back after the weekend he takes tins of biscuits and cake and hides them under his bunk but by the Monday afternoon the farm children have stolen and eaten them all. He tells all this to us later as a joke. My father’s stories are completely different from my mother’s. His usually have a wry point; though he is a victim he is able to laugh at himself, whereas hers are always high drama.

  He gets a job at Nimbin as a butcher’s boy and learns the trade that he follows all his life. His brothers become either butchers or share farmers; several progress to own their own farms, one becomes a policeman and another, the most adventurous, becomes a district officer in New Guinea and, later, a flight lieutenant in the RAAF. He begins to play football and becomes a star, in demand throughout the district. He plays Premier League and sports a new blazer every year with the coat of arms of a Rugby club on the pocket. The girls love him. Every Christmas his family goes to New Brighton to a beach house owned by his older sister and her husband. They go by train from Lismore to Booyong, to Bangalow to Byron Bay, then Billinudgel, hop down from the train at the little station and tramp through the bush with all their luggage. This is the family’s second home. They fish and swim and the boys go to dances at Brunswick Heads, Bangalow and Billinudgel. There he meets the girl behind the post office counter.

  My father falls quickly in love with my mother and she with him. She is soon pregnant, a fact I find hard to believe, knowing her strictness. It’s difficult for us now to imagine what this could have meant to both of them, especially my mother, and the date of their marriage was carefully kept secret from me until I was an adult. The stigma of such a marriage could stay with a woman all her life — people assumed that her husband had married her under duress (a shotgun wedding) and that he was the victim. A proportion of each female generation went to the altar not allowed to call themselves a bride or wear a white wedding dress for this, they were told, would be lying to God. I can think of no more cruel or humiliating experience for a woman, and am reminded of all the instances in novels of young women, like Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, or Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, who are tormented simply for loving and acting as their hearts dictated. Hester is cast out by the community and forced to wear a scarlet A (for adultery) and Tess, after a life of suffering caused by her seducer, is hanged for killing him. Tess’s comment that this world is a blighted star, was certainly true for her.

  Here all eyes were on a young wife, and the days between the marriage bed and the labour ward were carefully counted off by the matrons of the tribe. What a pity you couldn’t have waited just one more day! was the comment of one of these when my aunt gave birth the day before the nine months were up. Meanwhile my mother never referred to their courtship or wedding, there were no wedding pictures or presents, and from the moment of her marriage no friend or acquaintance was ever allowed to call her by her Christian name, and even my father soon began to call her Wife or Mum. Certainly no-one recalled her earlier identity as Eileen Alannah, her father’s favourite.

  Dead letters

  I come now to my father’s letters, which I hadn’t read when I wrote the first chapter, the account of my early childhood. My mother was an obsessive hoarder of all sorts of things, refusing to let go of any aspect of the past or face up to the present. After her death I found a collection of my father’s letters but, busy with other things, I stowed them away. I only bring them out when it’s time to write about their past, the reason why they were as they were. Nothing has prepared me for the fact that she had saved every single letter he had written to her, from the first love letter in January 1925 to those from Tasmania long after he had left her.

  There is no way that I can reproduce, in cold typeface, the tone, the variation, the changes in handwriting that the yellowed originals convey, or even the impact of the envelopes, with their penny King George V stamps. I read them in one sitting. It’s a shattering experience to see again his familiar handwriting, so like my own, to hear in my mind his familiar turn of phrase, experience for the first time his point of view and realise at once the unbridgeable gap that has always separated me from him. The clover chain is not simply a bond of sympathy passing down from mother to daughter, generation after generation. The push-me-pull-you chains of love and resentment which bind all mothers and daughters will always, to some extent, exclude the father. Perhaps these letters, his direct statements, will redress the balance.

  Between their meeting and their marriage there is a period of about five months, during which he writes continually, even if they are apart for only a few days. These letters are private: a mixture of tenderness, anxiety and self-doubt when he is, as he puts it, assailed by grave doubts. This is quite understandable considering that he is just nineteen, she eighteen. He addresses her as My Dearest Eileen and then, within a short time, she is My Dearest Wife and he always concludes with Best and Fondest Love, except when he feels neglected. There are occasions when she hasn’t written or rung, she hasn’t come when expected. Then he closes with a stiff and formal Yours Sincerely and is once again assailed by grave doubts.

  My mother is soon, as they said in those days, in trouble. Every agony aunt’s advice to girls in this situation was to tell your parents straight away, they will understand. I wonder how many did understand; how many ordered their daughters out of the house, or sent them away to an institution for unmarried mothers, where their babies were taken at birth and adopted out. My father recalls how difficult it was to tell your parents:

  I cant help thinking about your poor mother and how hard it must be on her. I will a
lways have great respect for her for the way she treated me that day and all the time knowing what she did but really kid I dont think either of us are to blame for what happened for God knows we battled against it hard enough, more especially you.

  I can only imagine their anxiety at this time and my mother’s humiliation. Why their marriage is deferred I don’t know. It’s possibly because his mother, my Granny, refuses her permission; there are conflicting stories about this. But it’s at this time that he buys her a diamond cluster engagement ring, impressive even by today’s standards, which costs him the equivalent of three weeks’ wages, and probably puts him into debt for months. He’s always very proud of it.

  The only letter of hers to survive is dated 10 May 1925. She is now four months pregnant, in a panic about the wedding and possibly worried that his affections are waning. The letter begins: I waited up at the office from 11.15 till 12.30 for you to ring & was very disappointed; and concludes with a postscript: your letter was rather short. She describes her wedding outfit — a grey gabardine dress — grey felt hat — black shoes. Cash all ran out & I had to stop. Still have to get gloves & stockings etc. I came home from town with 1/2 d. Her main concern however is with the arrangements for the wedding:

  Well Mum saw Canon Seymour (C. of E.) & got all the papers to be signed. I sent one to your mother & asked her to post it back. Dad has to sign one & he says he wants £50 before he will. (Joking.) You have to fill one in when you come on Tuesday. I arranged it for 6.30. You must come down Tuesday night because we have to go down to the ministers & make an oath & sign some papers … You did not tell me who you have for best man. They asked me & I had to say I did not know. For goodness sake don’t leave it till the last minute & find you have no-one … Marj can be bridesmaid. Canon Seymour said it was necessary unless you called on two witnesses from the audience & that would not be nice …

  And so they are married on a Monday night, she in a grey dress and sensible black shoes, he with only one hour off work to get to Bangalow in time. It seems to me that this event, though unrecognised as such until later, is the central tragedy of their lives; it will take more than one generation to work it through. On the day of the wedding the rain sets in and becomes a flood. My Granny and her twin daughters, my father’s younger sisters, get a lift the five miles from Keerrong to The Channon in the pouring rain, catch a service car to Lismore, then a train to Bangalow, for the highway is closed. My mother now wears a heavy rose gold ring on her finger, a ring which will accompany her twice into the labour ward, into far too many hospitals and psychiatric clinics over the years, into a nursing home in old age, and finally to her death.

  God only knows how I stand this sort of thing

  Their correspondence in these early years is obsessed with unpaid bills and the struggle to buy furniture. Even a few shillings can be precious. Take this, for instance, written when she is staying with her mother five weeks after their baby is born:

  It makes my head ache when I sit down thinking about how I am to pay for it all … I am going to have everything ready when you come back if I can … the whole trouble is going to be getting enough stuff to start off with but bugger it if the worst comes to the worst I can get a bit at each store and pop it on. I got Mallams [the doctor’s bill] and it is almost five, pretty solid isnt it. No more bloody bills for me. Anything I cant pay for I do without in future.

  His worst story is of blackmail at work, common during the Depression:

  I am very downhearted this morning. A bloke from Sydney came here the other day and offered to work for less than I am getting and I have had a pretty rough time ever since. He [the boss] told me this morning that if I didn’t get more work in than I am doing I would have to look for another job. God only knows how I stand this sort of thing but I can tell you it sticks in my guts to think that I have to listen to that sort of thing and not say a word back. One of these times I will forget myself and then God knows what will become of us … it makes me bloody near cry when I try to think things out … I feel that way now that I would just as soon clean up all of those Bastards down there and then hump my bluey out of the place. Dont think I am blaming you for this but it kills me to think that that crowd of crawlers can shit on me and rub it in and I cant say one word in defence of myself …

  One year later he has borrowed enough money to buy a hire car, and gone to Tweed Heads, leaving her, once again, with her mother. The car is old and always being repaired. Even though he sleeps in it to save accommodation, he can’t get ahead. Being his own boss is just as bad as being ground down by someone else. It is now November 1926.

  It costs a terrible lot to put a car on the service here. Apart from the drivers license I had to get a Coolangatta town license also a platform license for both there and Tweed Heads. I have to get a Tweed Shire license and a Murwillumbah Municipal license. All these cost 22/- each … It is bloody lonely up here, the only one I know is Tom Tranter and he goes out with a different tart every night. He is out with a grass widow tonight. I dont know how he will get on but he expects great things of her. In case you dont know what a grass widow is you are one yourself …

  A grass widow is a woman whose husband is away, either working or absconded. It’s not surprising then that by 10 December she is demanding to join him. He attempts to put her off until after the Christmas season when accommodation will be much cheaper. There are hints that the trouble between them is not all his fault. It seems that she is never contented, and he doesn’t expect things to be any better this time.

  I have tried everywhere and it is impossible to get board under £3 a week each during the holidays. As for coming up here just at present, well its madness because at Xmas time I will never be at home and I know that that wont suit you but for goodness sake dont come up here till I get some money to pay for our board … If you would wait until a week after Xmas we could get a furnished flat for next to nothing but just now the prices are out of the question … if you are going to persist in rushing up here just when I cant fix up things for you I might as well go back to old Bulgies and work my bloody guts out all day and night. I wouldnt mind near so much if I knew you would be willing to stop but I know very well that as soon as the novelty wears off everything you will get dissatisfied and want to go home again. In the meantime as soon as I get any money I will send you some if it is only a quid …

  The last letter in this series is dated 16 December 1926, her twentieth birthday, but he forgets it, concentrating on his own bad luck:

  Just a line to let you know how unlucky I am. On Thursday I got a ring up to go to Piggabeen and pick a bloke up there. It was a 30/- job so off I went in the rain and just as I got there my engine went bung and that is 9 miles from town. I had to ring another car and give him the 30/- to come out and get the bloke then I went back in with him and got a bloke in a motor lorry to go out and tow my car in and when we got there we couldnt pull it in. That cost me 30/- and I got it in yesterday with another lorry for 25/-. At present I am waiting for my car to get fixed and I have in wealth exactly 21/2 d and no chance of making any until the car is right. It has been raining like hell here since Monday and if my bloody car was right it is just the weather to make money because people cant walk about in it. I inquired about furnished rooms and I can get them in a couple of different places but the prices are right out of the question and it seems silly to think that you cant wait for another week or two and then we will be able to get fixed up cheap. Dont think that I dont want you up here because I do but I havent the money to fetch you up yet and you cant put it on the slate here the same as in Mullum …

  As there are no more letters in this series, she obviously joins him at Coolangatta, but they remain together only until late April, by which time she is nearly seven months pregnant. She attributes my weak constitution as a child to the fact that she was starved at this time; there was never enough to eat, and the evening’s food couldn’t be bought until he returned home with the day’s takings. Things are bad for e
veryone at this time and there are whispered stories of my father using his hire car to help shopkeepers shift their stock in the middle of the night so that they can burn their premises for the insurance.

  Letters from Charleville

  They have been married almost two years when he leaves for Charleville, looking for the big money in the shearing sheds. She’s convinced that he’s on the run, trying to get away from her. When he gets to Charleville, almost broke, work is hard to find, particularly for an outsider. He tries truck driving, fencing and shearing but, just as he seems to be about to earn the big money, he contracts a virulent ’flu, is dropped from the shearing team and is barely able to earn his fare home.

  Because of his experiences at Charleville and later at The Chan-non, he is one of the few members of his family to belong to the Labor Party, and is a dedicated unionist all his life. Meanwhile during his absence she is left with one child who is almost two years old and she is expecting another, dependent on the hospitality of his family (the many different addresses on the envelopes belong to his mother and brothers). There is evidence from the letters that two of his older brothers at different times demand his return. They are apparently outraged by his absence and neglect of his family, as shown by a cryptic comment in his letter of 13 July — I didn’t know whether they would give you a letter. It’s also apparent that she doesn’t always believe his hard luck stories, and has continually accused him of being a bloody liar. These letters are interesting for my father’s impressions of Charleville, and for his struggle to get work, but the question for me is whether he really did desert my mother before I was born, and I read them carefully, alert to their tone as well as the actual words. It certainly appears from the first letter, dated 26 April 1927, about nine weeks before I’m born, that they part amiably, so I don’t know what to think about her story that he tried to kill us both.