You are not going to believe this—SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES HAVE MOVED IN NEXT DOOR!! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came home—I literally stopped in my tracks and my jaw must have been nearly hanging to the floor because the sight on the landing outside my room was unbelievable—dwarves or midgets, very small men all different ages, dozens of them, swarming all over the corridor, and this woman with a basket over her arm, opening the door to the big flat opposite mine.
‘You’ll catch flies like that,’ said this tall woman in a long red skirt and a tiny apron and black hair done up like Snow White. I shut my mouth.
‘Hello, young lady,’ came a voice from the floor and I looked down to see the sweetest old man’s face on a body the size of a six-year-old. ‘Jack Delaney, otherwise known as Sleepy,’ he said, extending his hand.
I put down my shopping (bread, the newspaper for the job ads) and shook his hand. ‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘We are your new neighbours and we promise to be models of propriety.’
‘If you can keep them away from the drink,’ said Snow White, opening the door. Several of the dwarves rushed inside; Sleepy stood to one side and gave a gracious bow. ‘Drunken dwarves are not a pretty sight. I’m Beryl Markham, sweetheart, of Beryl And Her Marvellous Midgets.’
‘Oh, I thought you were Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,’ I said, following Sleepy and Beryl inside.
‘We did a special show for some boys out at Ingleburn,’ she said. ‘Care for a cuppa? This wig is hot as Hades and I’m dying for a wee.’
She disappeared before I could answer. ‘Let me take those,’ said Jack, taking the bags I was still holding.
I have always coveted the big flat—three bedrooms, a lovely black and white kitchen, but the best thing is the double bay windows at the front overlooking Rushcutters Bay. There was a young married couple here before and I only saw the view once—then I stood for a long time looking at the loop of the bay with its working boats, the dark mysterious green of the Moreton Bay figs in the park, and the palm trees dotted here and there. I thought it must be a bit like France.
‘Well, hello gorgeous,’ said a voice from behind me and I turned around. Standing there was a dwarf so handsome that if he had been six foot tall he would have been a movie star. He looked like Alan Ladd, all dark eyes and eyebrows and white flashing teeth. He had the most beautiful mouth. (What exactly is the difference between a dwarf and a midget anyway?)
‘Er, hello, who are you? I mean, how do you do?’ I said, flailing hopelessly, because I was really thrown—he was so good-looking it broke my heart. I don’t mean it was more sad he was a dwarf because he was good-looking, more than the others I mean, just that his good looks somehow made me see straight away his humanity. I saw that he was just like me, immediately. I saw that he was just like me, only smaller.
‘Ray Loosley,’ he said. ‘And you are?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Kathy Elgin,’ I said, shaking his hand.
Beryl Markham came back into the room, revealed as a bottle blonde of statuesque proportions. ‘Ah, that’s better. There was so much wee inside the old bladder I could have put out the Great Fire of London. Now, tea? Crumpets? What did you say your name was?’
‘This is Kathy, love,’ said Ray, walking over to Beryl and smacking her lightly on the bottom. ‘She’s going to give you a run for your money—she’s stealing my heart as we speak.’
I blushed—were they lovers? My head was immediately filled with impossible scenes. She was SO tall!
‘Now, now, Miss Kathy, don’t you worry, I won’t pounce on you just yet.’ I smiled at him—he really was very good-looking—and sat down at the table in the chair that had been offered.
‘Where do you do your shows?’ I asked the old dwarf Jack, who had pulled up a chair to sit next to me.
‘We do the Tivoli circuit mainly,’ he said, ‘but with the war we are doing shows far and wide. War increases the appetite for lots of things.’
There seemed to be people all over the place. ‘Do you all live here?’
‘Three bedrooms are all we need,’ Jack said.
‘And a spare couch for dalliances,’ added Ray, offering me a cigarette. ‘We’ve always lived around the Cross. The last place we stayed three years.’
‘Till that old crow tried to make a wartime profit,’ said someone else, who bowed his head at me and said,‘Clem Hogan, aka Grumpy.’
‘I’ll say. You can’t speak to him before eleven,’ said someone else, and then they were all there, around the table, and Beryl came in with the crumpets and the tea. ‘A woman’s work, etcetera,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I do it.’
‘It’s because you love us,’ said Ray. ‘Milk, sugar?’
They were all just ordinary men, some came from the country, one from a town just near us at Kurrajong Bay; most of them had gone into circuses at a young age. They were all fiercely patriotic and believed themselves to be doing war work, not fighting or giving their blood, but helping to keep spirits alive. After a while I even forgot that they were dwarves, or rather the knowledge of it moved right to the back of my mind—oh, it was SO interesting! Some of them had parents who had adopted them out, or else shunted them off to family somewhere else; others were kept at home but treated badly. Ray’s mum, though, had loved him from the first and told him that everybody was the same inside. She had taught him to be proud.
‘And look at me now. The star of a circus show, playing Happy,’ he said, his mouth twisted.
‘Now, now, chin up,’ said Beryl, ‘there are men out there who are dying.’
‘All six feet of them,’ he said.
I could hardly sleep when I finally got back to my room. Beryl had cooked up a huge pan of something called spaghetti bolognaise which an Italian friend taught her to cook. He was a magician, from Milan, and now she knows all about Italian food. It was really delicious and I had two glasses of red Italian wine, called chianti, which was divine! I thought: if they could see me now! Katherine Elgin, resident of Kings Cross, sitting around a table with seven dwarves and a peroxide blonde. I am fascinated by Miss Beryl Markham, absolutely fascinated—what kind of woman ends up spending her life cooking and cleaning for all those men, even if they are small? Oh, I can’t wait to find out absolutely everything about her!!!