Perhaps because I was an only child and a precocious one, there was no distinction made between the generations in our household. My parents’ friends were my friends, and my friends became, equally, friends of my parents. All topics were discussed in front of me, and only in the presence of an overwhelming majority of young people did my mother strive to be conscious of some division in age groups. One evening she was discussing, with a contemporary, a newly arrived theatrical producer on the Sydney scene. Four or five of my young friends were listening and my father was stretched, eyes closed, in his corner chair. The man was, thought my mother, a bad producer.
‘In fact,’ she said, ‘he’s not a producer’s…’ remembering, not quite in the nick of time, her audience, ‘…boot hole!’
This extraordinary epithet would have gone unnoticed had not my father opened one eye to correct her. ‘Arse lace you mean, dear.’
My father derived great amusement out of the US troops with whom he came, through me, in contact. They were perfect tease material, and he was, above all, a tease. On the whole, they were in and out of our lives so fast that he had some difficulty in distinguishing one from the other; however, I did manage, in the rush, to become engaged to two of them, and he had, perforce, to establish the identity of these two who might conceivably have become his sons-in-law. The first was a strapping young airman, with flashing teeth, who rejoiced in the unforgettably splendid name of Joshua H. Barnes, the Fifth. His home town was Paris, Kentucky, and my father’s tease was of a subversive nature, being directed at me rather than at Josh. He solemnly told all visitors, ‘You know Robin’s fiancé never had boots on till he joined the Army.’
After Josh, came Torbert H. Macdonald. Torbert was in PT boats, much more sophisticated, and visited Sydney often enough to become firm friends with my father. He had played football for Harvard—my father had played football for Melbourne University—and this formed the basis of their endless wrangles. Together they went to matches played under Australian Rules, my father explaining the rules and Torbert proclaiming the superiority of the American game. This argument always ended by my father snorting, ‘American football! Why, you wear so much padding that when you fall down the umpire has to shoot you!’
Torbert fell into the tease mould in every way, even to getting himself heavily decorated while on PT patrol, including a Purple Heart for having got his ankle caught in a mooring rope. On the leave following this injury, my father evolved his own decoration for Torbert. He had a medal made for him, a large round plaque on which was engraved a mosquito in full flight, poised above the number 106. The medal was bright yellow and was called the Malarial Medal. On the back the citation read, ‘For having reached the temperature of 106 degrees during an attack of Malaria and survived’.
He found the British Navy, when they arrived, more difficult to tease, but easier to shock: this amused him just as much. I was getting on splendidly with a Lieutenant Commander in aircraft carriers until the day my father produced one of his medical books and handed it around, open at a photograph of a diseased male organ.
‘Have you ever seen Robin’s Aunt Bertie?’ he said. ‘Here’s a picture of her. She’s downstairs now if you’d care to see her; you’ll recognise her by this, except that she’s got a hat on now.’
The photograph was, I regret to say, almost a speaking likeness, if one half-closed one’s eyes, of my dear Aunt Bertie. She was the one of my grandmother’s married sisters with whom we had remained on the most friendly terms, a splendidly robust old character, but she did possess a most unfortunate nose. My friendship, however, with the naval officer petered out.