CHAPTER 9

Grandma the Breadwinner

We never went to church; no-one we knew did, except the Catholics who lived up the street, but we never talked to them. Behind their backs we called them dirty Micks. Anyone we didn’t like we called ‘dirty’. But I didn’t call my dad’s mum dirty even though she was a Catholic. I hardly knew her because Mum was so anti-Catholic we never visited.

Grandma and her 15 siblings grew up in a family scratching a living from a farm in Glenrowan – a poor, Irish Catholic community in northern Victoria, home to the bushranger Ned Kelly. She had lots of penniless sisters who shared and re-fashioned one another’s clothes. They were all handy with needle and thread and their treadle sewing machine.

The young Phelan girls married when they fell pregnant, the unattractive ones became nuns. Grandma married a ticket seller known as a ‘tickie’ on Melbourne’s cable tramcars, and she was soon the mother of my father-to-be, Vincent, then 11 months later, a daughter Moyra. That was enough pregnancies for Ada; her husband slept on the couch thereafter.

When her husband, Bill, did his back in turning his tram around at the terminus, he was laid off without a penny. As it was during the Depression, he was easily replaced. ‘I needed to put food on the table,’ Grandma said. Using her sewing skills, she became the family breadwinner. She began working from her front room while Grandpa, now forever invalided, sat upstairs reading and observing busy Queen’s Parade in Clifton Hill. Repairs and alterations were her stock in trade within the local Catholic community, with a keen demand for remodelling hand-me-down school uniforms. The local nuns sought her help, and before she knew it, she was teaching dressmaking to the senior girls.

She was good at it, and clever enough to see Melbourne’s working girls were desperate for attractive, affordable clothes. She could do better than mending, she could be a dressmaking teacher. So, she bit the bullet and rented a room on the third floor of the Presgrave Building in Little Collins Street opposite Coles, smack in the middle of Melbourne. Fortunately, she was blessed with ‘the gift of the gab’. She made serious money from the young women flocking to her school, who stood two dozen in a class, giggling in their undies, while she and her new assistant, Audrey, measured them for patterns. The big Catholic convent schools sent classes of their girls in the mornings, accompanied by nuns in habits. Afternoons was the time for the country girls and young matrons, and after work, salesgirls filled the school. As her fame spread, more came and her business became a little goldmine.

Her daughter, Moyra, had married a Protestant as my father had, and she and Uncle Rob lived in the family home where she kept house and cared for her invalided father. Uncle Rob had accepted Catholicism but they didn’t make him go to church.

When clothes were rationed during the war, Grandma’s business was even more successful. She hired a second employee, was able to buy her tired old rented house, and move their dunny indoors – one upstairs for her and Pa and one downstairs for Moyra’s family. My mum seethed with jealousy. She said it was unhygienic to have the toilet indoors and Grandma was a bloody show-off.

I didn’t visit the school often when I was little because of the Catholic thing. Mum wouldn’t go near it, but Dad took me for a visit a couple of times when he was home on leave so Grandma could see me. He was a member of the Amateur Sports Club and would leave me with Grandma while he popped round to his club. Mum used to pop up the street. People were fond of popping.

I loved going to Grandma’s school. You went to the third floor in a lift driven by Bert, who had a gammy leg, a souvenir of World War I. He was a good-humoured man who knew my dad and would always make a fuss of me. Bert knew things like racing tips, illegal off-course SP bookmakers, and black market contacts. Secret knowledge was his specialty and I was in awe of him. ‘If you ever want anything, ask Bert,’ Grandma said.

When he let us out of the lift we were confronted with a long corridor of shiny brown linoleum. Grandma’s school was second on the left with a little fingerboard sign denoting the Moyvin School of Dressmaking. The title was repeated on the pebble glass door. Inside the door was Grandma’s office, which was modestly partitioned off from the big classroom, and contained a little desk with a telephone and a small table with an electric jug. This was a wonderful new invention for making tea quickly. It sat on an enamel plate because when it boiled, it jumped up and down, steam came out and it spat hot water. If you didn’t turn it off at the switch on the wall there would be boiling water all over the place. It was quite wonderful, part of the magic of visiting Grandma. She also had an assortment of crockery and cutlery for when she wanted to eat and her bottle of sherry for when she wanted to drink.

I liked being with all the young women because they were all so nice to me. There would always be two or three of them clustered around the professional sewing machine – another wonderful invention my grandma had. My mum had a sewing machine, but she had to pedal hers.

Audrey was Grandma’s right hand. She had striking red hair and could sew seams at a terrific rate. The machine would fairly fly. It sounded like a machine gun. On the window sill in front of Audrey was a black telephone with no dial, you just picked up the handpiece and a voice would say, ‘Number please?’ The Melbourne operators knew lots of telephone numbers. You could just ask for Myer or Georges and they would connect you.

When the phone rang at Grandma’s, Audrey would answer in her most cultured voice, ‘Moyvin School of Dressmaking. May I help you?’ Then she would pass the phone to Grandma, who would invariably sign up a new pupil. My grandma was very good on the phone.

The women who attended her classes had fun. Some of them were pretty hopeless at sewing, but Grandma had infinite patience and good humour. She was very funny and they went away happy with attractive new outfits and a foundation pattern to make more.

I used to love watching Grandma cut material. She’d put a little nick in it with her tortoiseshell-handled sewing shears and then, taking the cut edges between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, she would give it an almighty rip. The sound was electrifying, particularly with expensive material. Many of the girls took Grandma’s course just to make their wedding dresses. The material was so expensive they couldn’t bring themselves to cut it. Grandma to the rescue. A quick check of the measurements against the pattern, then rrrrrrrrip!

Grandma didn’t have a care in the world. She could do anything and say anything in front of anyone. She was a natural. It didn’t matter whether she was talking to a junior salesgirl or the Mother Superior from the Catholic Ladies College, Grandma was relaxed and confident.

Mary was the new junior and Grandma and Audrey were prepared to teach her everything they knew. Mary had a wonderful bosom and she was a hugger. When she hugged me, she pressed my face into her splendid breasts, and that was a fine place to be. Grandma would send Mary and me down to the Maypole delicatessen to buy lunch. ‘Make sure you tell them it’s for Mrs Geddes,’ she would say. ‘I want real butter and don’t be mingy.’

We used to buy chicken sandwiches made with bread so fresh it tasted like it had just come out of the oven. Grandma was the only person I knew who had ever eaten chicken. Mum said it was frightfully expensive, but Grandma ate it every day if she wanted. Sometimes she would even buy an entire chicken. Once, she gave me a whole chicken leg just for myself. We’d eat our lunch before the afternoon sewing class, sitting around the end of Grandma’s table. The sandwiches were yummy and it was warm and cosy in there even when freezing outside.

Everyone used to smoke cigarettes and the steam heaters would creak away. The room was kept warm so that the girls could stand in their slips for fittings, but sometimes the window over Audrey’s machine would be opened an inch or two. A token to the fetid atmosphere.

Some of the students were country girls who brought Grandma scarce cream, butter and eggs. They complained of the shortage of petrol and tyres and tubes and the difficulties of getting into town. One girl who knew the ropes said she had her car declared an emergency ambulance so she could get an extra two gallons of petrol a month. They complained that a healthy young man was a rare sight except in the city. At dances the only partners they had were young boys, old men and one another.

Grandma was no longer a housewife but a successful businesswoman and part of the new war-time labour force. Her students came from all walks of life and I used to listen to them talking about their lives.

‘You got a tram conductor’s job? There were 500 bloody applications! Good on you.’

‘Yeah, but you only get two-thirds of a man’s wage. The buggers. I could only take it because I moved in with Judy and we share childminding.’

‘My mum just got a job as a driver with the police force and the silly blokes are surprised she’s so good at it.’

‘What’s going to happen when the bloody men come back? They’ll kick us out, I bet.’

Grandma kept business simple. She worked long days but there was no need for advertising or accountants or banks. Satisfied students enrolled their girlfriends for the next course. As for tax, Grandma worked on the assumption it didn’t apply to her.

Grandma now enjoyed buying clothes for herself in exclusive Georges on Collins Street. She also bought big leather handbags there to carry her daily takings home in a cab to Pa who would be waiting up for her. She would empty her handbag onto his desk, and while she got ready for bed, he would count the banknotes into bundles before locking them away in the desk drawer. Had anyone ever seen so much money? He’d been lucky to earn a couple of quid a week.