I stretched out my arrival at 48 Francis Street for as long as I could by riding the tram to the end of the line at North Bondi, then walking all the way back along the beach promenade. Much as I had enjoyed the country, I sniffed the sea air like a pup out for a romp. It was the last day of the school holidays. Monday I would start at the Wellington Street High School. Should I mention that on the other side of the street a few doors down was the high wroughtiron fence of the Scarba Home? Was carbolic Matron McCechnie still there? What about scratchy Martha and Sunlight soap? Not much of a childhood grab-bag of memories to sift through, except that my odd ability to store up scents and what they dragged up never left me. So musk sweets and Grandma were inseparable, as was Bella from her Woolworths cologne and Sam from his Californian Poppy brilliantine.
The sun was still high in the sky as I pushed the gate open. I had no door key, never had. It was mercifully quiet, no response to my timid knock. I was glad to take off my coat and perch on the gas box. My two half-brothers came home soon after, followed minutes later by Shirley with a paper bag of Nestle's chocolates which she ostentatiously distributed to her two sons. For Chrissake, they were only a penny each, one more wouldn't have sent her broke. They sauntered up the garden path with barely a nod to me, opened the front door and . . . that was it. With the cheering picture of Jack Bayswaite to fall back on, I hopped down and knocked on the door. Shirley's voice screeched down the hall. 'Let the brat in.' One of the small boys opened it, flattened himself against the door to let me past and stuck out his chocolate-slagged tongue.
Today though, that minute, I felt so much stronger. As I rushed down the hall to the back porch where my stretcher stood folded up, I pictured Jack perched on my seat on the plough as Mickey plodded the furrow. At the bottom of my bag I had a seed potato I was going to plant. Jack had said, 'Plant it with the eye upwards, Alan,' but I reckoned he was having me on. I thought I'd do it tomorrow but right then I was hungry. The whiff of chocolate did that to you.
I recognised the sound of someone dragging a stick along a fence - our back fence. It stopped, then Frank Bayswaite's gap-toothed grin showed over the palings. 'Fuckin' 'ard work plantin' spuds, ain't it? Break yer bloody back. Y'orl right, young'un?'
'...Course he's alright, aren't you, Alan.'
I ran up the yard to the fence in time to see Frank's mum climb onto her upturned bucket. Frank laughed and called out as his mum elbowed him aside, 'If the work didn't kill him the fuckin' nutmeat would.'
Ma Bayswaite questioned me closely about the doings at the farm and finally got around to asking me if they had sent anything down for her. I shook my head, keeping shtum about the one seed potato. Conversation petered out. The pair of them went, leaving me to my thoughts which, I must admit, centred on something to eat. A boy gets bloody hungry, even though I had put away the farm's usual brekky, but that was, oh - at least . . . I don't know how many hours ago. I waited in the wash-house reading Tarzan comics and wondering what would happen if Tarzan and Boy (that'd be me) met Mandrake and Narda in the jungle. I didn't fancy my chances if Lothar, Mandrake's giant Nubian slave, took me on. Maybe, like in Uncle Harry's David and Goliath yarn, I could knock him out with my catapult made from a fork off the loquat tree and a bicycle inner tube.
My tea came, as usual, on an enamel plate plonked down on the washtub cover. I had my own knife, fork and spoon that I washed after each meal and kept on my shelf with my toothbrush. Those meals at the farm, though eaten mainly in silence except for the prayers, now seemed almost joyous compared to the loneliness that overcame me as I stood up and ate the food so grudgingly given me.
My father was now permanently on night shift at the munitions factory, leaving the house about 10 o'clock at night and coming home about the time I left for school in the morning. Our meetings were haphazard and when we did meet it was wordless - just a ruffling of my hair with his once well- manicured hand now calloused and a sixpence or a shilling that I would find in my school-pants pocket.
.... ....
The war moved closer to Bondi. My school days varied mostly by being more difficult to wag. Now we had old men and older women teachers; they were awake to all the tricks and excuses. The one I liked but couldn't use was: 'Dad's away at the war and I have to stay home and mind the baby while mum's at work.'
Once more I took refuge in reading, upgrading my choice of books borrowed from the penny library (for me the fee never went up) to a never-ending stream of Agatha Christie. Next in line was the pompous, debonair English crime-fighter who foiled the crooks with his bumptious upper-class style, abetted by a sub-human American named Hoppy Uniatz and his cannon-sized revolver, his 'Betsy'. Who else would get me out of the back porch/laundry/dunny as wonderfully as Simon Templar, even outdoing Mandrake. Not in all my life in Bondi or elsewhere for that matter did I ever set eyes on a Hirondel like the one Templar tooled around in. The flashest car I had ever set eyes on, and actually sat in, was Gertie's dad's Buick.
There were nights when I would hear Abe Feldstein's van pull up outside. When he had finished his huffing and puffing over Shirley's body he would step over me on the back porch as he went for a pee. As Abe left he also left me his usual bribe, 'Here's a deener, son, take your girlfriend out,' and poked me in the ribs. There was another small benefit for me in all this marital deceit. Shirley's attitude towards me was one of heightened disdain and, perhaps too, caution in case I dobbed her in to my father. He was surely aware of her goingson - what he didn't know was the cheeky frequency of the visits of his 'old friend'. And my pocket-money sources were also enhanced by my father's revengeful insistence on my 'visiting' Aunt Enid at around nine every Sunday morning. A bleary-eyed Uncle Bert would open the door a few inches, enough to get his hand through and wordlessly proffer me a sixpence. Equally silently, I took the money and made the round trip to Watsons Bay. When I got back to 48 Francis Street, Sam would ask, 'How's your Aunt Enid?' Considering I was only young and had no knowledge of family life, I concocted my reports from the stories in my reading and from what I gleaned in the schoolyard.
I don't think he listened. He was happy enough to have me on his side in an alliance against Shirley. They no longer quarrelled, perhaps due to their not really meeting. Like ships that pass in the night, as I'd read somewhere. Sam, for all practical purposes, was a free if much reduced man; he left money on the sideboard to run the house, he no longer slept with Shirley and our bond became, by default, that much closer. These were times when I wished I had read more of Havelock Ellis instead of homing in on the 'dirty' bits. Did he love me? Did he need me more than Shirley? Did he expect me to reciprocate? Well, I did not. I saw things clearly with the unclouded, ruthless judgement of my age.
My father now had Saturday nights off. He decided that this would be our regular fatherandson togetherness evening. The Bondi Road Hoyts cinema was chosen, regardless of what was showing. With something of his old boulevardier charm, he chatted up the ticket girl to hold two seats every Saturday night. Same row, same seats, on the aisle, 'so I can stick me foot out, the one with the bunion.'
Sampson Collins, emasculated in his fourth marriage, seemed to live vicariously through the films. He was both bigoted and loyal, and if that were not enough, he was a film misogynist. He had nothing but contempt for the wet-eyed innocence of Deanna Durbin and the bob-haired brassiness of the blonde screen sirens. Conversely, he was no misanthrope. The male perpetrators of evil were the victims of scheming women. I sat quietly, sunk down in my seat, not wanting to be seen with this 'old' man whose behaviour was . . .
Let me explain, if I can, his malevolent reaction to the foreigners. It was 1941 and the foreigners on Bondi's streets could hardly be missed, but with a quick shuffle he could avoid their proximity. His xenophobia was even more puzzling for me; after all, were they/we not Jews? He carried this hatred through to our Saturday nights at the Bondi Road cinema, seats 11 and 12, row H. Our attendance was as ritualistic as a Catholic's to Mass. The cinema became my schoolroom. My father used the films to educate me in the ways of the world. I was to beware of women and stay away from foreigners.
He stuck his bunioned foot out into the aisle. The epauletted usherette waved her weak torch at him to no avail. The velvet curtains parted. Labor Funerals -did I feel him flinch at this advertisement? Solly Goldstein Men's Emporium -Solly clothed him. Manly: Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care - he took me on the Manly ferry once in a while, and brought a bag of sticky buns from - The Gumnut Cafe. The velvet curtains closed with a sigh . . . Years and years later, I saw the whole scene again in miniature at a crematorium. I'd swear I saw the crinkly letters, 'The End', on the curtain!
'Watch me bunion,' said Sam to nobody in particular as the latecomers pushed past him. The velvet curtains opened once more to show a plan of the exits in case of fire or, for me, to escape my father's fruity flatulence. The curtains closed, then drew apart again as a kangaroo hopped lethargically over the Cinesound logo, grinned and dissolved into a ship nudging its way into Circular Quay. A gangplank rattled out; frightened men, women and children swayed down it with suitcases roped around their necks. The stern of the ship had a sign which read Pas op de Schroeven that for years I thought was its name. I was 35 before I found out that it meant beware of the propellers. I used to ask the refugee kids at school if they arrived on the Pas op de Schroeven. 'Orange!' they would yell at me, exasperated. If I happened to have an orange, I'd give it to them in a burst of reconciliation. How was I to know about the Dutch ship Oranje?
Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe seek shelter and a new life in Australia's sunshine, said the voiceover, and so on. Now here's the part where I got utterly confused. It took a bit of working out when I was only thirteen or so.
'Stone the crows,' Sam grunted, 'how many bloody more of 'em are they going to send here?' '
The man on the newsreel said they were Jews . . .' I whispered.
'I know that but Gawd, look at 'em gibbering away in . . .'
'German,' I said knowledgeably, 'one of the kids sat next to me at school.'
'Well, you don't bloody well mix with 'em, that's my instruction to you, son.'
He farted malevolently and we got feet in the back of our seats.
The kangaroo, bored with the subject of Jewish refugees, hopped back into its Cinesound enclosure. Its place was taken by the wholesome, pure and, for me, mother image of - the Columbia Lady. Her flaming torch burned for me. Instantly I formed a loving attachment to the Columbia Lady. She was not a bit like the cold statuary of Mary that lined the path of the convent a few doors down from Scarba. I think I loved the Columbia Lady, a flickering once-a-week love that faded from the screen but glowed for me all through the week; I had to make do with this mother image until the following Saturday night at the pictures.
Once, I timorously mentioned my feelings to my father but the master of misogyny said, 'She ain't and that's bloody well that.'
'How do you know she isn't - you know - Jewish?'
I had to shout 'Jewish' above the roar of dive bombers. There was a silence as the screen went black and the credits zoomed in from a tiny spot high up on the screen, got bigger and bigger, then flattened out to roll off the screen. I shouted 'Jewish' again. An angry voice behind us told my father, 'Keep the nipper quiet can't you, you old fart?'
The 'old fart' took not a blind bit of notice because now he was reading the credits out loud as they zoomed in, and every single one who had a foreignsounding name, my father said was a Yiddisher. Belatedly he had taken over my education as a Jew. His xenophobia was superseded by a peculiar loyalty to Jews. Was he purging himself of the Shirley years? As he persisted in reading out the names on the credits he gripped my elbow. He did not refer to them as Jews. No, that was how the antiSemites talked. His recital went something like this:
Screenplay by Samuel Scheinwald (Father: He's a Yiddisher.)
From a book by Ernest Hemingway (Father: Used to be Hornstein.)
Music by Irving Baumgarten (Father: Only the Yiddishers can write good songs. Look at George M. Cohan.)
Directed by Charles Brown (Father: Changed from something else for sure.)
Starring Basil Rathbone (Father, excitedly: A Yiddisher, just look at that nose!)
.... ....
Look ahead . . . I am still single. I have what the knowalls call an identity crisis. I sit in front of a headdoctor.
'Well, Doctor, I've come to you because in my childhood I spent maybe a thousand nights at the Hoyts picture show. I had, what do you call it? A mother fixation on the Columbia Lady. My father taught me that all film actresses were harlots and all the technicians, except the best boy, and most of the male actors were Jewish except . . .'
'Those that played anti-social roles?'
'Oh no, he reckoned they were Jewish too, only they were very clever in being able to act bad when they were really very smart.'
'Your father appears to have been a man of appalling ignorance.'
'I don't know, Doctor. At the time, it probably made sense to him. It was a time when the so-called 'reffos' were flooding the country, and what with them being Jews and us being Jews too, well, he didn't want to be lumped together with them. It sort of stands to reason, doesn't it?'
'My father, who arrived here in 1945, might not have thought so.'
'Sorry, Doctor, I'm only telling you how he behaved.'
'Of course, do go on.'
.... .....
Once a week the Columbia Lady's incandescent torch lit up my childhood. Before I knew the Columbia Lady, I had never given much thought to mothers. None of the four Mrs Collinses who had worn this title would have held so much as a weak candle to the Columbia Lady. One thing I am certain of: to the Columbia Lady I would never be 'poor Alva's boy'.
The summer came to an end. I had recourse to the memories of other women to call up when I felt miserable: Gertie, June and the Columbia Lady - all beyond physical reach and, perhaps, just as well. I was very good at imagining. Despite meagre, tasteless food and no affection, I grew like a weed between the pavement cracks at 48 Francis Street. Tread on me and I would spring back.