CHAPTER 38

My Religious Ranking

During Catechism class one morning a form was handed out with columns headed Masses, Communions, Confessions and Prayers. We were instructed to put a tick in the appropriate column each time we achieved one of these activities and the form would be collected at the end of the month. By then I had done my First Communion, which had been a breeze compared to the scary confession, even if it did involve the embarrassment of walking down the aisle before the entire school as the only big kid taking the sacrament that day.

My new schoolmates and I discussed this form at playtime and decided that a prayer could be as simple as a blessing: ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.’ That was simple enough. We knocked off half a dozen there and then and dutifully ticked our pages.

Ever wishing to be the good boy and please my teacher, I decided not only to attend mass on a daily basis, but also daily communion and weekly confession. On the tram and bus to school I would mumble prayers. I am sure my lips moved making me look stupid like my father often said. He told me I looked like a flathead with my mouth open which didn’t make me feel too good. Other times he said I was looking up at the sky like some kind of an idiot whereas I thought I was standing up straight like the signs on the bus said: Stand Tall, Sit Tall and Think Tall. I was never sure what thinking tall was, but I tried my best.

By 6.30 a.m. I’m out of bed preparing for mass. I’m dressed in my uniform and dancing around in my socks on the icy lino. Then, wearing the numbingly cold short pants, I ride my bike a mile to our parish church attended by a handful of old ladies who make no comment on my piety. I pedal through darkened streets, through frosts, through rain, through gales and every day I place more crosses on my God form. I suffer chilblains, lack of sleep, soakings and missed breakfasts. But in the religious stakes, I am a winner.

My parents made little comment on my religious fervour. They no doubt saw it as flash-in-the-pan stuff. My teachers were frankly incredulous. My classmates ranged from disbelieving to saying I was stupid. But I was pleased with myself; I had completed my sheet first. I was a good Catholic and the proof was there in black and white. I wouldn’t go to hell. I was a good boy and I deserved to be loved and go to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, which was the best seat in heaven and the one everyone in their right mind should be trying for.

My life settled into a routine. I’d arrive home from mass and warm my hands over the gas jet as I warmed the milk for my cornflakes. My aim was to leave the house for school without waking my parents. I was a champion of stealth and could have won a prize for tiptoeing. I planned to arrive at school early enough to join in the combative game played by two huge mobs of boys competing to get a tennis ball to either end of the bitumen quadrangle. There were no rules and I loved the game.

I was now learning Latin, French, algebra and geometry in addition to religion. None of these subjects had been taught at my previous schools and I fell behind. When I sought my father’s help with homework, he said it was obvious I had not been listening when the lesson was taught. Surely, I knew the answer. ‘Are you just trying to annoy me?’ He got cross and irritable. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Are you dumb?’

I’m like a rabbit caught in the headlights, paralysed with fear. Whatever I do will be wrong. Worse still, I might start crying. He might hit me. He doesn’t, but they do at school. Dad often threatens to; I’ve seen him hitting Mum. He can be very violent. ‘No wonder they can’t knock any sense into you at school,’ he says. ‘You never listen.’

There is a pain in my chest, a very deep pain. I am yearning for affection without success. I can’t make my needs known. If I reveal I want to be loved he will call me a sissy. ‘What have you got to snivel about?’ he says.

***

Grandma agreed to buy Mum and Dad a car. When I went with my father to the Ford showroom, we walked past the deluxe Mercury like Grandma owned and looked at the modest Prefect and Anglia. The salesman said there was up to a year’s wait to get one because of the war. But Dad later told Mum he’d intimated we could be moved to the top of the waiting list if we were prepared ‘to grease his palm’.

The Anglia was 8-horse power and when I found the Prefect had a mighty 10-horsepower engine, I wanted it. Dad agreed, but he found a second-hand one. It had faded cream duco when we got it and Dad had it sprayed black, which Mum had decided would look smarter. They bought a cloth cover to protect it at night, but after a week stopped using it.

My schoolmates’ parents left us for dead in the car stakes with their Humber Super Snipes, Bentleys, Daimlers, Austin of Englands, Rileys, Rovers and Jaguars. I learned to cringe admitting we had an old jalopy, a Ford Prefect. It was pretty reliable, but before outings Dad would say, ‘I’ll go and see if I can get the car started.’ It sounded as though he was about to perform magic. On a hill, we couldn’t trust the handbrake, and I’d have to get the brick out of the boot to block the wheel. And at sunset my other important job was to get out and turn on the tail-light even when it was raining.

However, with a car we went camping that summer to Lakes Entrance, Buchan Caves and Wilson’s Promontory in Gippsland, east of Melbourne. We didn’t stay in proper camping grounds with other people. Dad said they had to be booked and cost a lot of money, Mum said they were full of common people and were too noisy. Instead, we camped up side roads and tracks. Mum and Dad would drink at a local pub until it was nearly dark and then we would find a spot for the tent. First, we had to find two trees the right distance apart with flat ground in between – not as easy as you’d think. Dad would tie a rope between the trees, sling the tent over it and peg out the sides. We had a ground sheet that went down after Dad had dug a little hip hole for Mum. It would be dark about 8 o’clock and we’d go straight to bed on the hard ground.

In the morning we’d light a fire and make a cup of tea and cook sausages. Usually, the landowner would come along and check us out. Dad would say we were just packing up to go and Mum would intimate that we usually stayed at The Savoy, but were just roughing it as an adventure for the little boy.

From Lakes Entrance we went on a ferry to Lake Tyers where there was an Aboriginal mission. I had seen Aborigines at Tocumwal, but never in Victoria.

‘Why are they black?

‘Ssssh.’

‘Where do they come from?’

‘Ssssh’

‘Why have all the kids got runny noses?’

‘Ssssh’

‘Why do they live right out here by themselves?’

‘Ssssh.’

‘Peter. Come over here. There’s something I want to tell you. Now, if you don’t stop asking stupid bloody questions I’m going to break your bloody neck. Do. You. Understand?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ And so, I had a further lesson about Australia’s First Nations people.

We went to Wilson’s Promontory, and along the way went up a wrong road. Mum was reading the map, Dad was driving. Things were a bit tense, and it didn’t help when Dad got one wheel on the grass and the car wouldn’t move forwards or backwards. He decided Mum should get behind the wheel while he and I got out to push. Mum didn’t know how to drive and was never very good at listening to directions. Particularly from Dad. Particularly when things were strained. Maybe she forgot which pedal was the brake. And maybe, just maybe, Dad told her the wrong one.

I don’t know what really happened, but suddenly the car went sailing backwards down the big grassy hill and only stopped when it came to a wire boundary fence. The hill was almost too steep to clamber down, but somehow, we managed. There was Mum, uninjured, but a bit stunned and still firmly gripping the steering wheel.

When the tow truck finally arrived, he had to attach extra cable to reach the Prefect, but he slowly winched it up to the road and incredibly there was no damage. This experience decided Mum she needed to learn to drive to be independent of Dad.

At the Promontory, we walked to a beautiful deserted beach, and I begged for an impromptu swim. It would be dangerous for me to go into the surf alone, so Dad stripped naked with me and in we plunged. It was wonderful, and our enthusiasm must have been contagious because Mum undressed and was naked in the water with us. ‘Imagine what the papers would say,’ she said. ‘I can see the headline in Truth: ‘Xavier boy and parents nude frolic! Exclusive photo page three.’