CHAPTER 28

My Sanctuary

Occasionally I stayed overnight with Nana and Grandpa to give my mother a break, and I enjoyed the break myself. Nana and Grandpa’s was my sanctuary. I always felt so welcome and safe when I visited. There was never an argument, never an angry word and I never got into trouble. I was happy and felt loved, warm and well fed. What else could a little kid want? I truly loved my nana and Grandpa, and they loved me right back.

I’d go there on a Saturday with high expectations of the terrific baked dinner for lunch. I’d walk through their little front garden with its two grand ornamental palms, and up the sideway to the locked fernery gate. I’d look in the window and, sure enough, there would be Grandpa sitting in his big carver chair reading that morning’s newspaper at the dining table that Nana had already set for dinner. Nana would be bent over the wood-fired stove, the door open as she turned over potatoes baking with the leg of lamb. I’d tap on the window, and they’d both look around with big smiles.

Life in Burnell Street revolved around Grandpa. He used to catch the tram at 5 a.m. to go to work at the Williamstown docks and return at 5.25 p.m. He was a punctual man and a perfectionist. Nana would be listening for him to open the back gate and she would begin serving the meal. Grandpa would go straight to the laundry on the back verandah and wash his hands – he never washed them in the bathroom; it didn’t even have a wash basin. Just a big bath and a brown varnished cupboard with a mirror where Grandpa shaved every morning with his fearsome straight razor and a mug of water Nana heated on the stove. The laundry had worn concrete wash troughs and there was a small enamel bowl that we put inside for hand washing. The bowl made a terrible sound that set my teeth on edge when it scraped against the troughs. As Grandpa took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and lathered his arms with Velvet soap, Nana would be serving the mashed potatoes. The bar of yellow Velvet soap was used to wash hands and clothes alike; on wash days Nana chipped small pieces directly into the copper.

There was a towel on a roller on the back of the laundry door and when Nana heard it move, she would serve the meat (rissoles tonight, yum). Between the laundry and the kitchen, Grandpa would consult the barometer and reset if necessary, then briefly admire his collection of Aboriginal artefacts. As he approached the kitchen flywire door, Nana would be pouring the gravy. Then, as he opened the door, she would place his dinner on the table and he took his seat. For me, there are two big rissoles smothered in gravy and a huge pile of mashed potatoes and fresh green peas and there’s apple pie and custard to follow. Yum, bloody yum.

My grandfather had learned to be a carpenter as an apprentice. He had made his own hand tools and a special case to keep them in so he could carry them on his bike. As a grown-up he built a huge workshop with a high gabled roof in his backyard. Today it would be considered a double garage. But it never housed a car. ‘Why would I need a car when there’s a perfectly good tram service just around the corner?’

His workshop had two long benches that met in a corner. My favourite was the woodworking bench. Here, scented curls of wood were created as he planed timber. The other bench in Grandpa’s workshop contained metalworking tools and a small lathe and plumbing materials.

One entire wall of the shed was packed to the roof with split wood perfectly cut for Nana’s stove. Grandpa did not bring the wood to the house, that was Nana’s job. He selected the wood at the timber yard, then split it and stacked it into gloriously neat walls towering miles over my head and smelling of the Australian bush. Oh, I did wish we had some of it at home to warm our house. Whenever Nana wanted wood, all she had to do was go to the shed.

Mum begrudgingly admired his skills, but she hated Grandpa for being critical and such a disciplinarian. It was more than hate; she feared and despised him. I’d heard her call him ‘a rotten old bastard’. Not to his face, of course.

Grandpa was the provider; he went out into the world and earned a wage while Nana’s role was to add value. She turned firewood into beautiful food, and skeins of wool into sweaters and cardigans and even full-length dresses for my mother and aunt. Dresses of astonishing delicacy that were worn over full-length slips and which Mum said clung divinely. I used to hold the skeins of wool for Nana as she rolled them into balls. She said I was very good at it and a big help to her. My nana could crochet and knit wondrously intricate patterns while reading a romance from the library at the same time. That was how she spent her evenings.

After tea, Nana would ‘wash the dishes, dry the dishes, turn the dishes over’, then put them away. She would re-join Grandpa at the table, where he had been reading the newspaper while smoking his after-dinner pipe. At 7 o’clock, we would listen in absolute silence to grave events on the ABC radio news.

Grandpa thought it was a great old joke when we heard that armed guards accompanied the US President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, when she visited Melbourne. ‘Our Prime Minister strolls the streets without an escort,’ Grandpa said.

When Curtin romped back in in August of ’43, Grandpa was ecstatic. ‘This is the first time we’ve controlled the Senate since 1916. And two women have been elected.’ Listening to the news with Grandpa fostered an interest in politics in me, particularly for the Labor Party.

After the news, Grandpa and I might engage in tiddlywinks – a game of incredible skill we both played with intent as Nana’s knitting needles clickety-clacked in the background. The kitchen mantle clock struck the hours and audibly ticked the minutes and was echoed in the adjoining dining room by the cuckoo clock. The dining room was only used at Christmas; it was connected by an arch to the lounge room, also only used for special occasions. I only went in there with Nana when she wound the clock, or to look at the cuckoo come out and sing his song.

The evenings were long and comfortably warm in Nana and Grandpa’s kitchen, which was the true centre of the house. At home I would be sent to bed after tea, but here we relaxed, played games and had fun until Nana uttered the magic words, `My, it’s supper time. I’d better put the kettle on.’

There was nothing the little boy Peter enjoyed more than being tucked into bed and kissed goodnight with his stomach stuffed full of cake. I’d lie there deliciously warm under the feather eiderdown with the satin cover, listening to the clocks competing. ‘Bing, bong, cuckoo, cuckoo, bing, bong.’ Even in the middle of the night they did it. It made the night seem more important, and sometimes very long.

Nana was always up early with the fire lit and the kettle on to boil. The little kitchen was cosy and cheery by the time I got up, and on a weekday Grandpa would have gone to work already. More Nana for me.

Nana saved everything, including the brown paper and string from her shopping. She’d neatly fold the paper and had a special little tin for string which she rolled up and tied off in neat bows. She could break string by snapping it with her finger. All the shopgirls could too. Nana showed me how, but I wasn’t any good at it and kept hurting my finger. She also saved jars for making jam, and put vegetable scraps and tea leaves in a bin so she could make compost for her garden and worm farm. Mum just chucked everything out. But there wasn’t much; I could drag our little garbage tin to the front gate every week by myself.

If my nana saw a pile of horse poo on the street, she would run home and get her garden spade and collect it in a sack. Mum was mortified, but she loved the tomatoes Nana grew for us. Nana was good at giving and her gifts were usually things you could eat or wear. There were no plant nurseries. Nana dried her own tomato seeds and when she was out walking, she would pop a small cutting in her handbag from any plant that took her fancy. For me the ‘eating things’ were best, even if Mum did make us wait until later to eat them. She was always concerned that I would ruin my appetite. As if.

A neighbour had a huge plum tree growing on her fence line and 90 per cent of the fruit was hanging over Nana’s garden. She used to make jam in the copper she washed clothes in. I would help her pick the fruit and into the copper it would go to be boiled up with a cotton bag of white sugar. Nana also had six marbles that went in as well because she said they would rumble around in the boiling jam and stop it sticking. When it came time to bottle the jam, we would give the neighbour a good share. And we were careful to find all the marbles again. ‘We wouldn’t want one to finish up in our tummy, would we?’

Nana also made green tomato pickles and sweet chutney. She would preserve her products in jars and tie recycled brown paper covers on them using the string she’d saved. Nana believed in waste not, want not. And also something about not having idle hands.

When Grandpa built his air raid shelter, Nana stocked it with emergency food. Whereas the trench at our dump filled with water every time it rained, Nana and Grandpa’s shelter was like a little cubby house. He made the door from an old cast-iron bathtub for blast protection and had it balanced with counterweights on cables so that it could be easily opened and shut. You went down a small flight of stairs and turned on an electric light. There were candles and a kerosene lantern if the power went off and two narrow beds with blankets that could be used for seats. There was even a potty underneath just in case. Grandpa had a Primus stove so that Nana could make a nice cup of tea. I thought it was wonderful compared to our water-filled trench and hoped I would be visiting when we got bombed.