Autobiography of My Mother (12 page)

Secrecy about sex was not confined to Yass. It was the absolute key word all my adolescent years.

The nuns at Kincoppal simply never mentioned sex. We had no sexual instruction. My first period came as a complete surprise to me.

Once they had a Redemptionist priest at the school to give a retreat. We listened agog to his endless ranting and raving about purity. He was not invited back; the nuns felt that the Redemptionist was too much for us innocent girls. Probably it was too much for their own gentle souls as well.

Except for Noel, boys of my own age were a bit of a non-event. Spending my holidays at Yass meant that I missed out on parties with my friends in town. But one holidays when I was staying at Grandma's, I was asked to Ursula Cusack's birthday party. I was thirteen. My cousin Pauline was also asked.

The Cusacks lived at the other end of Cooma Street from Grandma's. Lenny Cusack was my brother's best friend in Yass and there were plenty of boys and girls at Ursula's party.
We played the piano and danced, we never thought about the time. When the party was over, we trooped out from the Cusacks' in a gang of about twenty. We walked everyone home from the party. Pauline and I, one of the Cusack girls and three of the Cusack boys were walking hand in hand. We went up Cooma Street, round the hill behind Yass in a giant circle back down to Cooma Street so we arrived last at The House.

Suddenly the clock struck two and I realised how late it was. Our entrance had better be discreet. We whispered, ‘Goodnight' to the Cusacks and Pauline and I took off our shoes and started to creep into the house.

Pauline was a giggler; once she started, there was no stopping her. I, too, was prone to giggling attacks but it was Pauline who started that night. Frowning as hard as I could, I mouthed for her to be quiet, but to no avail; she couldn't stop.

As I opened the front door to step into the hall, Pauline dropped her shoes, bang, bang, on the stone step. The sound reverberated through the house. Like clockwork, Auntie Linda came out of the drawing room, her head wrapped in a white towel because she had taken off her wig.

‘Do you know what time it is?' she demanded.

I was also laughing by this time; we were both hopeless cases. Linda was outraged.

Grandma was away in Sydney buying for the store that week and her absence gave Linda added vehemence. How dared we come home so late? Linda glared at us. When she told Grandma what we had done, Grandma would send Pauline and me straight back to Sydney because we couldn't be trusted. She went on and on. Half an hour later, our ears ringing with Linda's invectives, Pauline and I slunk off to bed.

We didn't appear at breakfast and waited until Linda had gone about her business before we got up and went into Annie's room looking for sympathy.

‘Auntie Linda is most upset about you,' Annie said solemnly, with a twinkle. ‘She doesn't know what on earth you could have been doing at that hour of the morning. She's going to make your father have a talk to you.'

I thought about this. ‘Why didn't Dad or Uncle Luke come and get us?' I asked. It was only a quarter of a mile down the street to the Cusacks'; if they were so worried they should have come and fetched us. We seemed to have logic on our side.

Dad and Uncle Luke, in fact, had never given us a second thought. Dad had been to the Soldiers' Club, come in and gone straight to bed. Uncle Luke came in later than Dad and also promptly retired. Only Linda had sat up waiting and worrying.

When Grandma did come back next day, Linda subsided. As usual, she was not really brave enough to tell tales to Grandma; Dad certainly wasn't going to say anything because it had been his fault, not ours, and so the party passed over. But Linda gave us hell all the day before Grandma's return.

I had my first crush on a real person when I was fifteen. I fell in love with a blond tennis player named Paddy who lived at the end of the street. I followed him everywhere, which wasn't very far since I was away at school all week but on Monday mornings I made sure I was on the same tram. I tried to stand as close to him as possible and I stared at him with longing across the crowded tram. I was far too shy to talk to him; I couldn't begin to open my mouth in his presence.

Mollie had left school by then. She used to hold Friday night card parties at our place for her friends. She knew Paddy and occasionally he was asked on Friday nights. I wasn't invited but hung about all night swooning in the background.

My swooning must have been more obvious than I realised. Paddy had a friend called Bill. One Monday morning Paddy wasn't on his usual tram, but Bill was. Bill was a tease, he came up and chatted to Mollie and me.

‘Paddy tells me you've got a crush on him,' Bill said with a wink to me. I glared at him, humiliated beyond measure. I was furious that my love for Paddy should be a joke and that he should know the way I felt. He could hardly have failed to notice the way I haunted him, but such is schoolgirl passion. Paddy's appeal diminished rapidly after that.

Having a photo of the person with whom you were in love was very important. I developed a passion for another of Mollie's friends. I didn't have a photo of my new crush, but he reminded me irresistibly of the picture of an ape in a
Cole's Funny Picture Book
so I cut out the drawing and gazed fondly at that. My infatuation with the ape also failed to develop into anything more serious.

About this time, my cousin Joe, the son of Dad's brother Joe, the doctor, who was at school at Riverview, and I had a perfect day together. Grandma had been away with Kathleen on a cruise, Joe and I went in early one Saturday morning to meet their ship near Darling Harbour.

Grandma stayed at the Hotel Metropole whenever she was in town. The house she'd bought in Randwick was long sold now. Once she was established at the Metropole she would ask us in for a meal with her. After the meal, she would reach into her black bag (Grandma's big old-fashioned black handbag was a part of her) that contained
an endless supply of two shilling pieces, and give us 2s each as a present.

This particular morning she was buying for the shop, so instead of taking Joe and me to the Metropole, she gave us each £1 and told us to enjoy ourselves. This was a fortune.

First we treated ourselves to a breakfast spread of bacon and eggs, tea and toast with jam. Breakfast over, we headed off to an eleven o'clock session at the pictures but before we went in we had enormous green and pink ice cream sodas in tall glasses. More ice cream soda and sandwiches followed for lunch. Then we saw the afternoon session. When we came out and counted our money, we had only our tram fares back to Randwick and enough to buy one copy of
Smith's Weekly
. So we bought
Smith's Weekly
, sat down in Hyde Park and read it together from cover to cover. We laughed at the cartoons and caricatures, and read the jokes out aloud. With our last fourpence we caught the Randwick tram home. It was a day to remember.

Mollie was eighteen now and in full social swing, going to parties and dances every weekend. I was in awe of her and her friends. One of her girlfriends came to stay with us on a Friday night. Mum had put a folding bed down in the middle of the big bedroom that Mollie and I shared. I was locked out while Mollie and her friend dolled themselves up. They came out looking a picture, I was suitably impressed and envious. The friend was said to be the best dancer around. She was a thin girl with a surprisingly large bust for such a slender body. Her hair was puffed out over her ears in the style of the moment. She and Mollie swept off into the night.

About two in the morning, I was woken by their giggling. As I lay in bed watching them undress and listening to their
gossip, I was startled to see Mollie's friend pull out two pads that held her hair so fashionably puffed. Out of her camisole came two more pads; her beautiful bosom. To my horror, finally she proceeded to remove her teeth, which were also false. Her teeth had all been extracted because of an infection. It made an indelible impression on me.

However, Mollie's friend was soon engaged and married, and lived happily ever afterwards. She must have danced her way into her boyfriend's affection.

We wanted to have a party at home, King and Mollie especially, but Mum wasn't keen on our having parties. The flat wasn't suitable, she would say. It wasn't big enough.

She was right, but when she went up to Yass for a holiday, Mollie and King decided to hold a party to end all parties. We moved the entire contents of the second bedroom into the back yard, dressing tables, wardrobes, beds, the lot, and prayed it wouldn't rain. The boys even took up the carpet and sanded the floor for dancing.

Lila Logan came to stay. She helped Mollie to prepare the food. They did the cooking on the day of the party. Lila and Mollie were beside themselves with excitement and made strange, high-pitched little whistling sounds to each other when it got too much for them. They made trifle after trifle for supper.

Streamers festooned the drawing room, hanging from corner to corner and cascading from the light bulb in the centre. The excitement had reached fever pitch; we had just finished putting up the very last streamer when the doorbell rang. It was Uncle Barney with John, a young cousin of ours – Joe from Riverview's brother, in fact. Barney's eyes lit up as he took in the decorations.

‘You're having a party,' he said.

Could Mum have sent him to check on us, we wondered, panicking, or was Barney being genuine? Mollie acted quickly. ‘Yes,' she replied. ‘Would you like to come?'

Barney's eyes positively shone. ‘I'll have to bring John,' he said.

‘That's all right,' we answered. It was not all right, but we didn't find that out until later. John was only twelve, and we banished him to the kitchen.

Determined not to spend the evening there with John though I was only a year or so older, I searched my mother's wardrobe for an evening dress I could wear to the party. Long dresses were fashionable. I was as tall as my mother, but I was skinny. The gown I chose hung about me like a flag without wind, its hem trailing on the floor. I must have looked a sight.

Joy from the flat upstairs came to the party on her own; her husband Bill was working as a dancing instructor at the Palais Royal and didn't finish till late. A tall, awkward, angular youth, a friend of my brother King's, was immediately besotted with Joy. Early in the evening they both disappeared into my mother's bedroom.

About midnight, Bill arrived at the party. ‘Where's my wife?' he asked in a loud voice.

Joy emerged smiling from the bedroom, the angular youth nowhere to be seen. His whereabouts remained a mystery.

Barney enjoyed himself immensely; I can still see him reciting poetry to an admiring circle in the drawing room. John had a good time, too, as Mollie discovered when she went to serve the supper. He had eaten all the trifles Mollie and Lila had so painstakingly and lovingly prepared.

Dancing continued in the second bedroom until early in
the morning. There were not enough chairs to go round, and people either danced or leaned against the wall. Towards the end I was shocked to see a fat man sitting on the floor, with his pudgy legs stuck out in front of him and a tankard of beer in his hand. He seemed extremely gross to my youthful eyes.

When the last guest had gone, the gramophone finally wound down. The angular youth appeared from under the double bed in Mum's bedroom, where he had flung himself in terror at the sound of Bill's voice.

Next day the furniture was moved back inside. We cleaned up, washed the dishes, took down the streamers and everything was in place as Mum arrived home. She took one look around the room.

‘You've had a party,' she said.

A shred of streamer was stuck to a tack in the corner of the ceiling. The trouble that ensued was nothing, we felt; the party had undoubtedly been a triumph.

We had exams at Kincoppal, but there wasn't the emphasis on them that there is today; the school was too small to bother with formal examinations. Trix called me in at the end of the year after the Intermediate exam and told me that if I wanted to do the State Leaving exam, she would send me to Rose Bay Sacred Heart convent (now also known as Kincoppal) for my final year.

Again, I resorted to tears, though not of joy this time. I didn't want to go to Rose Bay, I pleaded. I couldn't bear to leave Kincoppal because I loved it so much. Besides, I wanted to leave school so I could become an artist. (I thought that once I was out of school I would become an
artist in a few weeks. As it has turned out, being an artist has taken me half a century.)

So I stayed at Kincoppal for another year, without exams. My last year was a good one. I studied the history of art and worked on my art lessons with Dattilo-Rubbo. We had a few painting lessons now, as well as still life drawing. I did a painting in oils of the harbour from the school grounds and for the first time Signor Rubbo praised my work. ‘Excellent – good in pen work,' was his comment.