5

B Y THE TIME I was born, the golden age of the department store had passed; the era of consolidation was well underway. Sydney – like Brisbane, like every other city and town in Australia – had its share of homegrown department stores but by the 1970s there were very few left. Farmer & Co had been sold to Myer. Mark Foy’s had been taken over by McDowell’s in 1968, then subsumed into the burgeoning Walton’s empire – which had also aquired Anthony Hordern & Sons and Marcus Clark & Co – in 1972. Like its Melbourne counterpart, Myer, David Jones had embarked on a regional and interstate expansion in the 1950s, sweeping through the country towns of New South Wales before aquiring stores in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Grace Bros, in the meantime, had claimed Sydney’s suburbs.

It’s Grace Bros I remember shopping in as a child – always Grace Bros and never David Jones – and I can date the various stages of my childhood according to where we shopped: Liverpool and Penrith in my earliest years, then Parramatta and Carlingford, and later the Macquarie Centre. With the exception of the original Grace Bros on Broadway, with its regal parapets and high arched windows, which we visited on special occasions, the department stores of my childhood were unromantic places – windowless and brightly lit, with Richard Clayderman’s latest and greatest piped in. Still, I remember these stores seemed like a sanctuary, no doubt because my mother felt at home there.

I suppose these stores played the part of a portal, transporting her to some of the happier times of her own childhood: dressing up to go and see Daddy and Uncle Duncan at work, or attending the Saturday children’s concert – or, come Christmas time, visiting Santa in his workshop. No doubt she bought things – I remember her pulling out her Grace Bros charge card at the register, and the red and white plastic shopping bags – but for me it was always more about the experience. The absolute treat of being taken to lunch, where I could order whatever I wanted, which was the same thing every time: an iced chocolate and a ham, cheese and pineapple toastie. Then, of course, there was Christmas: the elves and the little drummer boys, the miniature Nutcracker Suite, the glittering glow of Santa’s Cave and all that tinsel, and the knowledge that whatever was in those red and white plastic shopping bags would wind up under our Christmas tree.

For my mother, and for generations of Brisbane children, McWhirters was synonymous with Christmas. According to the Truth, ‘Have you seen McWhirters Christmas display?’ was, in December 1907, ‘a question being asked everywhere in the city and suburbs’. In 1909, The Telegraph correspondent observed:

The most ardent devotee of the rites and ceremonies of Christmas could find little to carp about … the basement of the emporium has been commandeered for the children, and there Father Christmas reigns amid a quantity of performing teddy bears, dolls of all sizes, bicycles and perambulators, seaside outfits, mechanical toys, and the hundred and one other toys designed to make the Christmas season a joyful time.

And the following year:

Not even the most exacting youngster, in this age, when children are connoisseurs in the matter of toys, as in most else, could find fault … Truly the toys are wonderful. Hopping kangaroos bid fair to usurp the premier place of the Teddy bears. Grey elephants and polar bears sport beside the domesticated cat and dog, rows upon rows of lovely dollies, from the chubby baby specimen to the grown up and smartly gowned women of the world, will hold feminine affection, while the mechanical toys, aeroplanes, and motor cars and boats, guns, and railway trains, with their stations and signal boxes, will charm the young brother.

‘We used to have the biggest Christmas tree,’ my mother tells me, when I asked her about her childhood Christmases. ‘You’d walk in the front door, through the big entrance area with really high ceilings so there was room for a giant tree. It probably wasn’t that big, but when you’re little it seems really big.’ When he worked at McWhirters, her father would bring home lots of decorations from the store. And the presents? They must have had more presents than just about anyone. But she only remembers what she didn’t get: ‘One Christmas I asked for a bike and I snuck a look under the tree and there was a bike there, a black one, a two-wheeler bike, and it turned out it wasn’t for me, it was for Jean.’

When Milly dies, Christmas is less than a month away, which to Granny and Sophia might seem a blessing more than a curse. There is something to focus on, something to prepare for. Sophia gives the orders to the man who tends the yard: they will have a real cypress pine this year, not an artificial one, and he is to find the biggest and best, even if it means going to the country. The tree arrives and it is a beauty: green and fresh, and shimmering with life. It is set up in the corner of the parlour, and Stirling and Nancy are invited to help decorate the tree. They drape it with streamers and hang baubles, Chinese lanterns and tiny gifts from its boughs. When it is done they stand back and look. They all agree: it is a fine tree, the finest they’ve ever seen.

In the first week of December, Granny Atkins and Sophia take the tram to the Valley daily. When they arrive, they make a beeline for McWhirters. Undeterred by the crowds and the heat, they sweep in through the plate-glass doors on Wickham Street and follow the flow of traffic to the toy department. They buy cricket bats and footballs for the boys, silk scarves and bathing suits for the girls. A solid leather weekend case for Jean. A stationery set for Nancy. A new Akubra hat for James. A toy Ford motor in a coupe design for Stirling. The shopping is its own reward, a lullaby to their mourning. And in the act of choosing and charging, and seeing the gifts wrapped and despatched to delivery, there is hope. Come Christmas Day, the parlour will be filled with so much light and colour, so much. The tree will be dwarfed by all that surrounds it, more clothes and toys and games than most children could imagine. And with halls so decked to distract them from their sadness.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the children, too, make their way by tram to McWhirters. They travel late in the afternoon, when the summer heat has started to subside. Jean says she can look out for the younger ones, but Auntie Soph won’t hear of it; she insists that she chaperone. And so they go, four children and their aunt. They alight on Wickham Street and join the crowds, drawn despite themselves to McWhirters’ famous island windows. The boys watch a miniature train as it speeds round and round, through tunnels and past stations, never straying from its tracks. The girls admire the gloves and sunshades and hosiery, draped enticingly over velvet cushions. They all point and laugh at the cannon firing balloons straight at the window, straight at them, bursts of red and yellow and green and violet that float and waft and scud across the pane, before settling, one on top of the other, a pile of rainbow-coloured refuse on the floor.

In through the doors they go, into this place they’ve been coming to all their lives – into this place that is, for all of them, a second home. And they are greeted by name by everyone they meet – the dapper doormen, the pretty young assistants in perfumery, the stern manager in fancy goods. They do not tarry. They know where they are going, and Jean leads the way onto the escalator. Auntie Soph falls in behind. As they go up, drawing closer to the second floor, they can hear the tinny strains of the mechanical pipe organ – and know that Toyland and Father Christmas are near. Jean and Jim jostle with each other, trying to get front spot. Stirling and Nancy wriggle and writhe and hop. Auntie Soph pokes. ‘Enough of that!’ But she smiles when she knows they cannot see her.

Off they go – one, two, three, four – running now (they cannot help themselves) to the merry-go-round. The attendant sees them, knows who they are. If there’s a queue they will not join it. Jean helps Stirling onto a horse of his choosing, then finds her own. Jim and Nancy ride side by side. It is not as big as the one at the Exhibition but it has all the same features: the mirrors, the gaudy lights and the scenes from far away – a swan swimming on a Swiss lake, a starlit sky over the Matterhorn, a boy in an Indian bazaar. And this merry-go-round is their own. The music starts and the horses release, creaking up then down on their poles. Stirling grabs the reins and pretends to race. He races up and down and round and round, passing the small children with their mothers in the cars and the wide, flat boats, and others on the picnic benches. He passes Jean and catches Jim and Nancy, then passes them too. He looks out into Toyland, with its hundreds of lights and shelves filled with toys – wagons and cars and motor cars; bicycles, tricycles and scooters; walking animals; trains on rails; dolls and tea sets and games of every description. He waves to Auntie Soph. He keeps riding. Around and around. He wants it to never end.

In the long, lost years after my grandparents’ divorce, my grandfather Stirling used to visit his cousin Jill – my mother’s namesake – and her husband, Harry, on their sheep farms in the Darling Downs, or at the Hotel Max, the pub they owned for a few years in Moree. I hear the story from Jill’s daughters, Penny and Ruth, who are the granddaughters of my great-grandfather’s sister Ruby. When Penny tells this story, they are in Moree; Ruth remembers it as being at the farm near Talgai, a small settlement outside Warwick on the Darling Downs.

But this part they both remember. It is sometime in the 1960s. Their mother’s favourite cousin has come for Christmas. He is tall, with very thick glasses. Every second utterance seems to be a joke; they like him immediately. When they ask why he is there with their family for Christmas and not his own, their mother shrugs and tells them he is at a loose end.

He jokes all the way through Christmas dinner, and they love it. The men started drinking early and have grown louder and louder with each passing hour. It is early afternoon, and I imagine it must be hot. The shades are drawn. The ceiling fans beat a steady rhythm overhead. Despite the diligent and timely closing of screen doors, flies have secreted their way inside. They fly low, buzzing about heads and hovering above food scraps on the table.

Dinner is devoured and the pudding arrives. As their mother serves a portion on each plate, the children watch keenly, hoping to see the glint of a sixpence on theirs. Stirling takes a mouthful. He is rolling his eyes. This must be some kind of joke; they are primed to expect that from him now. Anticipation of a punchline hangs in the air. He begins to cough, then splutters theatrically. The children are alarmed, despite themselves. Is he choking? Should something be done? But when he pulls a pound note – apparently from his mouth – they are delighted. They know it is a trick – no one puts pounds in puddings! But they also know that it is performed just for them. And fifty years later they will remember it and remember him with fondness, this man who brightened their Christmas Day with a childish prank. They will believe it says something about his character, and perhaps it does. He is a larrikin. He is, despite his many flaws and foibles, a warm-hearted man, not an angry man like their father. He feels at home among children. In many ways, he belongs in their world.

By this stage, he is estranged from his wife and children. His grandmother and aunt, the women who raised him, are dead. Of his four siblings, only one – his sister Nancy – is still living. When I heard this story, my first thought was: why wasn’t he having Christmas with Nancy? Had she tired of him by then, the drinking and the endless banter, the constant wheedling for loans she knew he would never repay? Perhaps he was simply more at home with Jill and her husband Harry, and their children. Jill was his favourite cousin, and he was hers: she adopted him as a little brother, perhaps in lieu of her own younger brother, Duke, who was shot down over the North Sea in 1942, his body never recovered.

Stirling, the man with the pound in his pudding, was basically bankrupt. But what would that mean to a child? He was at a loose end – an oddment, a remnant, or a human furbelow – and their family took him in.