CHAPTER 16

Where Do They Sleep?

Cars rarely used our street – it was our playground. In summer, we’d play cricket using our little garbage tin for a wicket, with Laurie and I taking turns bowling. We weren’t very good, so spent most of the time retrieving the ball. We really needed more fielders and although there were a couple of other boys our age up our street, they were Catholics. In winter, Laurie and I used to kick a footy up and down the street.

But our favourite thing was my billycart which Grandpa had built. It was really well made like everything he built, but it weighed a ton. Laurie and I didn’t care. We’d drag it up our hill, then sit awhile resting while we planned our descent. It was best when the garage was empty at Laurie’s dump and the doors were open. Then the challenge was to steer through the gutter, across the footpath and end up inside. ‘Let her rip,’ I’d yell as Laurie pushed as hard as he could and jumped on. We fairly flew as we headed for the gutter. ‘Hang on,’ I’d yell. There was always the danger we’d tip over. The only brakes we had were the heels of my shoes. I’d already ruined one pair of expensive shoes according to Mum, and she wasn’t going to buy anymore.

Sometimes when we needed extra ice for our ice chest, Mum would send me with my billycart to the ice works about a mile away. This gave Laurie and I the opportunity to sell old newspapers to the butcher or the fish ’n’ chip shop. They gave us a halfpenny a pound, so if we filled the billycart, there’d be enough dosh for us to buy an ice cream each, or at least an ice block and some lollies.

Not many of the neighbours could afford daily newspapers, which only contained a skinny eight or ten pages. We knew the best houses to try as well as the ones with nasty dogs. Also, the ones that liked us to come to the front door, and those the back. There was a real knack to our collecting; we knew to be very polite. Melbourne could be so bloody hot and we’d be roasting. ‘It’s gonna be over a century today,’ Mrs Jamieson would predict, and we’d agree. ‘Yeah, a real stinker.’ She’d offer us a glass of water, or at least direct us to the gully trap where we could drink from the tap.

In the butcher’s shop there were animal carcasses hanging off hooks on a big metal rail around two sides of the shop with a wooden coolroom at the back. The butcher had sawdust on the floor that we figured was to sop up the blood. He agreed our papers were in good nick, but wouldn’t let us bring our billycart into his shop. ‘It’s not hygienic,’ he said, whatever that meant. So, we had to carry the papers in from the street to be weighed. We reckoned they weighed at least 10 pounds – maybe 12. But the butcher’s scales registered just under nine. Four pence halfpenny. A disappointing result for our hot work and barely enough for two flavoured ice blocks. We could buy two baby ice creams, but they wouldn’t last long. Now we had our dough we had to decide whether to enjoy immediate pleasure or press on to the ice works and save our money for the trip home. ‘Later,’ we decided, but we were really buggered by the time we got there.

The ice works is shady, dark and cool. Water drips down from a huge tower and magically becomes ice. There’s a huge stack of ice and I don’t know why it doesn’t melt. ‘One block please, mister,’ I tell the man.

He slides a big block across the wooden dock towards us and to make it fit in our ice chest, he starts chipping it with a little pick he had tucked in his belt. Bits of ice are flying all over the place; the man kicks some towards us. It’s lovely. Our mouths go numb and we rub it on our foreheads and the back of our necks. The man hops off the dock and loads our ice into the billycart. ‘That’s a bob for you blokes,’ he says. ‘And here’s a couple of chunks for you to eat.’

‘Thanks, mister,’ I say, giving him the shilling Mum had carefully wrapped in my hankie. We decide to save our newspaper money for later. We’d brought a potato bag to keep the sun off the ice, and we can sit on it for a cool rest. The heat is exhausting but we manage to get the ice home to Mum’s satisfaction. There’ll be cold beer for her Yanks tonight.

***

Yank servicemen became part of my life as morality went out the window. Mum would go to the Dug-Out with Roma and Pearl on Friday nights, bringing home ‘lonely boys’ who’d stay a night or two and then go off to war. Although our Yanks were careful to keep under cover during daylight, their drunken arrival in the middle of the night did not go unnoticed.

I used to play in the backyard at Laurie’s place and his mum would invite us in for a glass of cordial and a biscuit.

‘How many men are staying at your place?’ she asked me once.

‘Just a couple,’ I replied, knowing that was probably the wrong answer.

‘Where do they sleep?’

I didn’t know what to say. When I told Mum, well, she really hit the roof. She grabbed me by the shoulders and stared into my face with big, bulgy eyes. ‘Laurie’s bloody mum should mind her own bloody business!’ There were little bits of spit coming out of her mouth. ‘Don’t you dare go near her place again.’ She was shaking me really hard, and I was trying not to cry because that would only make her crosser.

I didn’t get told much war news. Mum said it wasn’t good for me. However, I’d hear bits and pieces of talk. ‘Charlie’s missing,’ I heard Mum tell Roma. ‘They say he walked into a machine gun ambush and was just about cut in half. Poor boy. Would never have known what hit him.’ Which one was Charlie? What did he look like cut in half? Sometimes late at night when the men were pissing on the nectarine tree outside my sleepout, I’d hear snatches of conversation: ‘Guys crying for mummy.’ ‘Body bits everywhere.’ ‘Can’t take prisoners. Shoot the rats in the head.’ ‘No time to bury anyone. Terrible smell.’ In the morning, I’d wonder if it was just a bad dream.

One day I’m sitting quietly under the kitchen table while the girls work their way through a bottle of sherry. Roma reckon the Yanks have introduced a civilising influence to male–female relations in Australia. She says American men really like women and are prepared to court them, whereas her Aussie boyfriends only think about women at bedtime. ‘Our blokes just want to hang out with their mates,’ she says. ‘They go to the footy, and the pub or put a few bets on the gee-gees. But the Yanks buy us gifts and take us dancing and pay compliments.’ Pearl likes their sparkling white teeth, nice uniforms and manners. ‘And hallelujah,’ she says. ‘They’ve got lots of money and they aren’t scared to spend it.’

‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ people used to say. ‘Too right,’ my mum would reply. ‘We’re making the best of it in spite of the prudes and wowsers. They can go jump in the lake.’ She and Pearl used to enjoy a laugh when they talked about the League of Decency and the Social Purity League that had been formed to look after the welfare of ‘our girls’. It had become a worn joke that the cheapest thing in Australia was the girl. ‘Some people just don’t want anyone to have fun,’ Mum would complain.

Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, Sir Frank Beaurepaire, and his wife toured the city one Saturday night and were shocked by what they saw. ‘It wasn’t a pretty sight,’ Sir Frank told the newspapers. ‘People carousing in lanes, doorways and parks.’ Sir Frank demanded something be done for the reputation of Melbourne and the welfare of the girls. There was a story in the paper about a St Kilda councillor who reported shocking scenes on the beach at 2 a.m. with uniformed servicemen and girls aged as young as 12 and 14. Mum and her friends cheered when a police investigation decided there was nothing indecent going on. ‘They’re just lovers, doing what lovers do,’ said Mum. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

Catholics blamed the free condoms issued to the troops for the promiscuity; this resulted in the government agreeing to ban advertising for birth control. Mum and her women friends resented this action because condoms prevented venereal disease. The puritans said stopping the sale of alcohol to women could help bring back ‘a proper morality’, and other righteous souls suggested that women with venereal disease should have their heads shaved. ‘The wowsers even condemn the new wonder drug, penicillin,’ Mum said. ‘Because the drug cures sexual diseases, they reckon it’s an excuse for open slather.’

It was a strange time to be a kid. No dad, home alone with Mum, with little money, in a mean little house, hot in summer and freezing in winter. She was bored and bad-tempered at being stuck at home with ‘her little brat’. However, things looked up for her and her mates when the Yanks arrived. She would say later that the extras the Americans provided had got her and little Peter through the war. I reckoned it was Mum, Roma and Pearl that got the extras – shorthand for stockings, black market beer, fags and someone to sleep with. I was just eating stick chewing gum, taking out the empty beer bottles and fending off questions from the neighbours. I just hoped Nana never discovered what was going on at our dump. I’d be ashamed. But Mum used to say, ‘Life is short, and who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?’