Labyrinth - Plague in Olde Sydney Town

I set this story in Sydney in the year 1900 - the time when Bubonic Plague hit the town, creating death and panic among the residents and those who would govern them. Another of the favourites I'm repeating for those who missed out on the first time around.

Cheers

June

'and then we got into a labyrinth,
and when we thought we were at the end,
came out again at the beginning,
having still to seek as much as ever.'
- Plato

It is a particularly dark and still February night in harbourside Sydney Town, a scorching airless night where hundreds of souls toss and turn on beds of straw and rags, wishing for the southerly to come and ease the heat, the latest of their discomforts.

Look close through the gloom to see outsize rats skitter from nearby docked ships. See them nuzzle the rubbish in streets and backyards, and watch them scamper through cesspits and ground depressions where foul slops lie.

Venture a little behind the fine facades of Kent Street to find those souls in the tangle of filthy brick huts. Little buildings packed tight in criss - crossed lanes and courts, hidden and forgotten. In rows of seven at a time those huts, stuffed with families and workers sharing four rooms at the rate of sixteen per hut. And them with one tap and two water closets to the row.

In one such room a candle flickers, throwing strange shadows about the walls, and lighting six sleeping bodies and another, with eyes wide open, staring.

Miriam McDonald is odd to this place, her red hair gleaming. She reclines on the dank straw, the fine cotton fabric of her nightgown stretched against her distended belly. Her long thin hands move to this roundness, stroking gently.

A deep sigh, and a woman nearby throws her arm loose as she rolls in her sleep.

Listen for myriad other sounds in the night. Groans, and screams and thudding bodies, horse's neigh, ropes strain and slack canvas flaps, distant train whistle. The body collectors trundle their cart.

Against these rough sounds, Miriam sings, oh so low and so sweet, to her coming child.

They say that the more respectable a family, the less patience is shown if a child should fall from grace. This was surely the case with Miriam’s Momma and Poppa who had worked in the employ of the Macarthurs at Parramatta all of their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them.

Through the years her family had invested much in achieving a good reputation, and were now showing very little tolerance in their daughter’s time of trial. To Miriam, it seemed as though they had thrust her aside, leaving her prey to countless horrors. She would never be so heartless with a child of her own, she whispered.

Mostly she was able to persuade herself that she had done nothing to bring about her troubles, and that there was nothing to feel guilty about. At other times she felt an unease and asked herself if she could have done anything to prevent the catastrophe.

Try as she might, she could not condone her parents’ attitude and that made her very determined that she would make her own way, and solve her own problems.

To be fair, Miriam’s parents were always kind and taught her the niceties of her station, and some accomplishments a little above that. She even played the piano a little, and wrote a reasonable copperplate. Her needlework was not perfect, as she lacked patience in that field, but it was passable.

Those who knew Miriam intimately would note that she knew how to seem docile and agreeable, but suspected that she didn’t always feel that way. Something in Miriam seemed to bubble at times. Some would say it was her nature to speak too loudly and too long. Her eyes did not peep out from fluttering lashes, but gazed boldly. Perhaps this was a predisposition for one with such red hair.

Miriam was eighteen when she first decided to take a path of her own. She'd heard of life outside of Parramatta, and she wanted to live it. It is perhaps an irony that her parents’ careful preparation of their daughter’s attainments smoothed the path to her downfall.

The decision made, Miriam had little trouble gaining a place at one of the more stylish residences in the colony. It is also true that this was made easy because of the connection between the Macarthurs and Lyndhurst. After all, its original owner Dr. Bowman married John and Elizabeth Macarthur's daughter.

Miriam imagined that her parents believed the new discipline would be good for her character, for they had supported her application. So, even when she found herself in a most horrifying and extreme state, because she understood the pain they suffered, Miriam still called her parents ‘dear’.

To a young girl away from home for the first time Lyndhurst seemed the most dismal and sombre of houses: two storeys with vast high ceilings at both levels, and sprawling on its own peninsular into Blackwattle Cove.

The darkness closed in as the sulky rattled up the bluff. The great bulk of the house threw deep dark shadows over the garden beds, and the leafless trees thrust their branches outwards: threatening and gnarled and ugly.

Miriam discovered herself cringing into the corner of her seat. She dabbed with a handkerchief at small beads of perspiration that had settled on her forehead. To that point she had been excited at the prospect of her new life. What was so different now? She pulled herself together and adjusted her bonnet as the horse clip clopped its way to the servants' quarters around the back.

For many days the girl with the red hair was tossed on a most turbulent tide. She was a maid, at the beck and call of everyone in the household. Her duties called her to answer to the slightest of whims, dashing through a maze of dark and shadowy rooms at the sound of a bell.

She fetched firewood and hot water to the upstairs bed chambers, humped mattresses, and moved furniture from parlour to dining room. She scoured and fetched and carried until exhausted.

Still, in her occasional quiet moments she felt a sense of accomplishment, and an enjoyment with the newness of it all. There were dinner parties and soirees when some of the most powerful people in the colony ventured along the Lyndhurst carriage way to pay their respects, and show their finery.

Always from a discreet distance, Miriam watched the ladies in their elegant gowns, and wondered at the miracle of their tiny waists. She could hear refined voices discussing Mr. Hordern's new emporium and the demise of the skirt bustle in Sydney fashion circles.

She noted that the gentlemen vied with each other for the heaviest gold watch and chain, and for the fine tailoring of their black suits. The new Constitution Bill also featured heavily in their conversations.

There was one man Miriam admired particularly, even though his demeanour made her strangely uneasy. Young Mr. Oswin was different from the rest. He remained detached from those milling around the piano, or gossiping on the various sofas. He simply stood quiet, a tall and brooding presence at one end of the room.

A friend of the young master, Mr. Oswin was staying as part of the household. For some days Miriam took any excuse to view his bearing and his languid brown eyes, apparently filled with secrets.

She fell to daydreaming about him, imagining him paying her attentions; offering her a posy he had picked from the garden. She imagined him bowing grandly and asking her to dance. She caught herself blushing at the thought.

One evening it occurred to her that Mr. Oswin himself was returning her glances, even though his gaze was more steady and unsubtle than she dared herself. His unwavering gaze became a compelling feature of her life and those eyes seemed to follow her everywhere, quite hypnotic.

Miriam would admit that she enjoyed the attention, and on occasions, she even found herself smiling in his direction. However, when she did so, a strange sensation of fear always followed.

Sharp needles of ice cold pricked her cheeks as Miriam moved through the darkened house, setting things to right before she could retire for the evening. Her hand lingered on the thick velvet of the drawing room drapery, enjoying its softness.

Outside, a gusty wind whipped through the trees on the bay. The dull glint of gaslights played on the buildings of the distant town, then slipped into the bay to shimmer on its restless water. She shivered. And then she turned swiftly to direct the light of her candle towards a subtle movement in the corner of the room ...

The light flickered, revealing Mr. Oswin.

He looked strangely uneasy, his frame ramrod straight and his eyes shuttered. He took a step towards her and Miriam’s prickling skin warned that there was something amiss. She reeled towards the door, but Oswin moved closer and his hand was a vice on her shoulder.

‘Be still,’ he whispered hoarsely.

The heavy candlestick clattered to the floor, snuffing its flame. Oswin’s hand stifled her scream and they struggled together, there in the half light. Then for a moment, the girl with the red hair seemed to relax, as though bending to his will.

But she sank her small teeth into his hand, felt the bone, and tasted warm blood. She broke free, ran to the end of the room and stopped, twisting to meet him.

Blue eyes flashing, Miriam brandished a scoop of red hot embers from the fire.

'Come no closer,' she seethed.

'Now my pretty. You want this. You know you do.' The gold watch and chain glittered at his waist.

'No sir. I do not. Get back. Get back .'

For a moment, he turned from her, and then he turned again, to step sideways and behind her small frame, capturing the scoop and her arms in one action.

'You little witch!'

He stemmed her cries again, this time with fierce lips, and they rolled to the floor.

The dying fire illumined her desperation.

The black water of the bay was thick with floating trash. The stench of human waste intensified as she approached the scramble of buildings on the other side of the swivel iron bridge. Lightning bolts split the lowering sky, and she shivered, although the sticky heat was intense.

The girl with the nest of red hair bent beneath the weight of her single cloth bag, and her gait faltered.

Sydney Town.

Humanity gathered to crush her in its grip, sweeping her past Sussex Street and left into Kent Street. Leering men and skinny crones, yelling and screaming children, and young women with lifeless faces.

Miriam approached one who sat suckling a child on the wooden steps of a house.

'Roach, ye say? Next lane, fifth on the right.'

The squalor was worse with each step. She fought her way past four children playing in mud, and a slobbering drunk propped up against a wall. Mrs Roach, toothless and gross, leaned in the doorway of a crumbling hut at the end of the row.

'Miss McDonald? They said you was comin'. A wicked girl, they said.'

Wicked. She didn't feel wicked. It was Mr. Oswin who was wicked. Him and his oily ways.

Miriam felt the sting of tears as the woman preceded her into a dim hallway, damp with earthen floor and corroding brick walls. Many eyes peered at her as they passed a row of doors lining the hall.

They were the eyes of people prostrate or sitting in semi-darkness, crowded into tiny spaces; people odious- and angry-looking.

'This room's yours. Only five in here, with yersel', an all of 'em females. Think yersel' lucky.'

The hag turned to shuffle down the hall. Miriam wiped the tears with the back of her hand and gazed at her new prison. It reeked of sweat and pain and hopelessness. She placed the bag with her precious possessions on a heap of straw in the corner, and sank down beside it.

Which way out of this hell hole?

That night on her squalid bed she tossed and then she dreamed. She dreamed of a woman, lone and proud, and her baby nestled in a field of spring flowers and sunshine. Beyond, distant dark figures of apprehension were lost in the mists of time.

'Have you news of The Plague?' Jenny Entwhistle, a little wisp of a girl, emerged from the shadows.

Mrs Roach was right. There were but four other women in the room. However, she had failed to mention Jenny's two children who also vied for the space: young Beckie, three years-old, skinny stick legs peeping from beneath a rag of a dress, and Grace, thumb in mouth, and snot from her nose rushing to meet it. Never had I seen such miserable little creatures.

'No,' I said absently. 'What, pray, is The Plague?'

'They say 'tis the cause of the most vile illness and death, and that it kills wherever it breaks out. They say a man has died from it in Ferry Lane, in The Rocks. You have na' heard?' The words tumbled into the dismal room.

I shook my head, but Jenny did not pause to take note of it, and prattled on: 'They say he 'ad great swellings on 'is body, and he was vomitin' and shakin' and died in no time, stinkin' somethin' awful. They say it could spread everywhere.'

I was still for some moments, the tangled sounds of human habitation all around. Jenny's panic was infectious. She now had my full attention, and the room was suddenly very cold.
My baby. I must make my baby safe from this terror.

I had not imagined such degrading and detestable circumstances existed as those of the Kent Street lanes.

They say the hidden parts of Sydney at the turn of the century were worse by far than the slums of London, of which I had heard whispers often enough. Many people held physical scars, with pock marks, wasting and many other afflictions quite obvious. One man had no legs at all, and bumped along on shrunken stumps. God alone knows how he managed.

Families fought over their differences in the streets, clawing at each other and rolling in the mud in fits of drunkenness. With seclusion so scarce, men and women could be glimpsed coupling within and behind buildings, night and day.

To move in these lanes was to stumble over rubbish and filth; attending to personal needs, such as the washing of bodies and clothing, a constant struggle.

The women in my dormitory had difficult lives. Sarah Campbell, the most determined of them, had taken to prostitution as a way out of her penury. She was an animated skeleton, and most brazen, always taking the Lord's name in vain.

A young woman who thrashed about on the litter next to me had a naturally surly expression made most remarkable by the absence of her left eye. The empty socket glimmered sideways at you, seeming more lively than her real eye, and as black as her soul.

Hannah Simpkins, a thief, was capable of stealing the leg from a donkey.

Paradoxically, my favourite among this brood was a woman who haunted the darkest part of the room. Mary Jones was quite mad, her frenzied dark eyes mostly hidden by grubby tangled locks. She bore her indisposition quietly at most times, venting her frustrations only on herself.

She would sit in that corner and scrape away at her arms with any sharp object which came her way, and her limbs were a mess of scars and raw red wounds. Regardless, she did have a certain dignity which was hard to overlook. I was indeed sorry for her, and did what I could to help in little ways. I wonder even now what dreadful matters came to pass to reduce her to such a plight.

Somehow these people existed here, as much a part of this place as werethe cockroaches that crawled around the walls and the floor.

Jenny Entwhistle had counselled me against walking up fashionable George Street, saying we should keep to Sussex Street which was more to our station. How I wish I had listened to her.

We'd barely reached the corner of Liverpool Street when a group of three larrikins and their girlfriends surrounded us, calling and jeering. Jenny and I huddled in a tight knot, she clutching tiny Grace, and me with Beckie cowering into my skirts.

'Get back to yer filthy holes,' they yelled. 'Ye molls.'

The boys stood there in their flashy bell bottomed trousers and high heeled shoes, arrogant and menacing, performing for their donahs. The girls themselves loved it, in turn parading in their cheap and fancy velvet jackets, a profusion of ostrich feathers fluttering from their hats.

The circle they formed grew tighter and tighter around us.

The little girls sobbed loudly. I knew I had to act. I straightened my stance and said as haughtily as I could: ‘'What would your parents think of this behaviour? Cease at once.'

In my experience, there is something in the heart of a delinquent which answers to such a response, whether it be shock or perhaps an echo of childish discipline. At any rate, the ploy worked.

They turned on their heels and walked north, yelling as they went.

"Prostitutes!"

"Sluts!"

We ignored them as best we could and soon breathed more easily.

It was Wednesday, rations day at Sydney Benevolent Asylum, and the queue outside the store was exceeding long with sad and ragged people. We would wait hours for an allowance of a little meat, flour, sugar, bread and tea ... supplies for a week.

This will not be my lot in life!

The poor house was also the lying-in hospital. It was large and rambling and evoked a distinctly supercilious air, guaranteed to keep the lower classes in their place. Cold as charity, as they say. I would keep my distance for as long as I could, but in the mean time, I must eat.

Jenny and the children entered the store first, but only Jenny herself emerged, clutching a parcel of rations to her chest, with tears tracing muddy paths down her face.

'They took me bairns,' Jenny sobbed. 'Said I wasn't lookin' after 'em proper and I could have no more rations 'less I gave 'em in.'

Grace and Beckie were to go to the Infants' Home at Ashfield, and Jenny could apply for them when she had reached a standard of living fit to support the two little girls.

How could she do that?

Shrieking whistles ripped the air as we turned the Market Street corner to find that horror ruled.

People young and old, singles and families jostled us and each other, scurrying south in panic and hubbub. They carried everything they owned, tied in cloth bags and humped on shoulders; and with fractured faces.

Officials yelled and screamed orders, carts rumbled, and the picks and shovels of sanitation teams scraped and scratched at the great piles of rubbish strewn around the streets. Men carted off the muck and ordered the scrubbing and scouring of hovels and the drains and lavatories surrounding them.

We struggled on to our lodgings.

A group of men with masks around their faces carried a body between them, on a frail litter, and we gagged as its stink submerged us.

The Plague had arrived and we were defenceless against its power.

Jenny and I edged down the hallway to our dormitory, but the space was skint - completely bare of any possessions. Someone had taken our belongings.

As we stood there, gazing in disbelief, I felt a sudden griping sensation, followed by a wrenching agony.

My baby would come, thievery and plague notwithstanding.

The handcart bumped and bucked as we trundled towards the lying-in hospital, past the George Street cemetery. Its gravestones shone in the light of a weak crescent moon: so many white teeth in the mouth of hell.

Aboard the cart, I was largely insensible, my entrails on fire.

The wheels shuddered again at the asylum entrance, and the men encouraged me roughly to my feet.

I almost fainted away in terror then, but made it up the steps. Here a severe looking woman stood, her face framed by a stiff white collar, and lit by a candle.

We moved forward, and I was in a very large dark space lined by portraits of imperious men.

The flickering light created strange shapes of the thick furniture, and threw into relief the rectangles of many doors around the perimeter.

As best I could, I followed the woman with her long skirts swishing across the tiled floor, my own steps slower, and faltering.

Perhaps sensing my terror, the matron turned to smile at me.

With surprise I realised that her eyes were kindly, and comforted by her softened expression, I made an effort to settle myself.

My stance became more confident and the pain lessened momentarily.

Whatever lay ahead I was determined to make a good life - for my daughter and for me.

© June Saville 2008. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

Read about the Bubonic Plague now and see some pics.

I thought this story was topical, even though The Black Death or Bubonic Plague was a much more horrifying disease than the swine flu has turned out to be right now.

It's the Australian flu season and many thousands of people have come down with sniffles, fever, aches and pains. However, it's impossible for the lay person to tell the difference between the usual annual flu virus and the new strain that is swine flu.

A bit more attention to everyday hygeine (like washing hands) is much more useful than any form of panic, in my view.

Has swine flu hit your town? How does it affect people?

Sex at Sixty-Five

Many younger people tend to believe, without thought, that the elderly are as good as dead when it comes to personal relationships and sex. My story centres on two friends who share their innermost feelings in everyday conversation. We learn of their hopes and desires, and their talk demonstrates that they have great wisdom as well. Enjoy 'Sex at 65', another of the favourites among my short stories.

There was something wrong. Something different. And Velma was sniffing the breeze.

Theirs was a long term ritual. Every week day Monica and Velma watched Days of Our Lives while curled up on Monica’s sagging two seater lounge, and sucking cups of Bushells tea. One sugar and a splash of milk for Mon, and for Velma, three sugars and black.

The machinations of the Salem crew always played out in total silence, but Mon and Vel’s post mortem was fierce, and punctuated by a second cuppa and some peanut butter sandwiches.

There was rarely a break in the routine. They’d watched daytime tele together since 1985 when Velma and her Fred moved into the fibro triple front next door. Mon lost Wilbur early in 1980 and had lived alone in their two bedroom brick ever since.

On week-ends when Fred was home Mon kept herself to herself except for a trip to the local club on Saturday nights to play Bingo. But of late, things had been different. Mon had been doing things she wouldn’t talk about.

Velma reached for her third sandwich and broke the triangle of white bread in two. She licked her finger and trawled the plate with it to collect crumbs. She sucked at them and prepared to attack the sandwich itself.

‘Mon … Are you ready to tell me? Come on, spill the beans. It’s a fella isn’t it?’

Monica looked sideways at her friend, and then pushed back a lock of silver grey hair from her face. About six weeks ago she’d had it permed for the first time Velma could remember, and now it was getting too long.

‘Come on Mon. You don’t keep things from me!’

Thoughtful, Mon rose from her lumpy seat and limped over to the kitchen to refill the teapot. The bright purple flowers on her shift clashed awfully with the bright orange of the bench top.


‘Well, I suppose.’

Velma settled her bulk more comfortably, in anticipation.

‘We met at Bingo.’

‘Ah …’

‘He was across from me and we were both going really well with our cards, chalking up numbers like mad. I had only legs eleven to go and it stayed there for about three numbers and I was sweating. I hadn’t won for weeks.’

‘One number for three turns!’

‘Mmmm. Anyway, it came up. Legs eleven. And I yelled “Bingo” as loud as I could, real excited.

Then I realised he’d yelled too. The man across the table. At the same time. And we looked over at each other. And I saw his eyes. And he was as excited as I was.’

Mon had forgotten to put the lid on the teapot, and the window glass was becoming opaque with rising steam.

“So we had to share the fifty dollars, and when we came back to our seats after collecting it, he ushered me into my chair in such a posh way.’

‘Truly!’

‘It was nice to be treated special again. By a man. Before I knew it my heart was saying “Bingo” too.’

Velma waddled over and gathered her friend in a bear hug.

‘Oooh. How lovely!’ She had tears in her eyes.

Mon broke away from the hug, still miles away. Then, as though on automatic, she took the teapot and a second plate of sandwiches waiting ready on the bench top and placed them on the coffee table next to the lounge. She sat down again.

‘ We used to sit on the cliff at dusk, eating ice cream.’

‘Mmmmm.’

‘We had some really nice times ...’

Velma was tucking in, although intrigued.

‘So what’s happenin now? Is it still on?’ An oily glob of peanut butter dropped to her lap, unnoticed.

‘Well, not at the moment …’

‘Oh! Oh well … ‘

‘No. No, it’s not on now.’

‘Oh.’

‘No. It was good while it lasted. In some ways. But … ‘

‘Yeah. I suppose. I s’pose there’s two ways of lookin’ at these things. I s’pose.’

Monica shrugged, and gazed out of the window at a magpie pecking for grubs in her lawn.

‘Yes. There’s different ways of looking at things …’

Velma plumped herself around on one hip so she could look straight at her friend, sitting there on the lounge.

’You know, I s’pose if you look at it fair and square, you’ve probly had a bit of a lucky escape.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah. I reckon.’

Mon was grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly.

‘Yes. I reckon too.’

This was more like her Mon. Velma swirled the tea in her cup to make sure of the last grain of sugar.

‘A bloke’s good for a bit of company. Yeah. But once they get long in the tooth things change.

Then they just want a cook. A servant.’

They shared a long silence. Then Mon said: ‘Men are scared to be by themselves you know.’

‘Yeah ... but it’s more than that. They’ve got egos. Egos are what gets them in knots.’

‘I agree with that!’

‘Yeah, they like a woman around to make ‘em look good, but you try and contradict ‘em or want your own way and you’ve had it. They can’t cope. Nope. They just want a cook.’

The silence was more comfortable this time, and Velma took over the pouring of the tea.

‘Remember, only one sugar please Vel. Trying to cut down on carbohydrates. Made myself a promise to get into a size sixteen.’

‘Don’t forget the chocolate cake I brought in. You’ll have a piece of that?’

‘Oh … Okay ...’ The magpie had caught a grub and she could see it wiggling in its death throws, trapped there in the maggie’s beak.

‘We did share a lot. Movies and books. We liked the same films you know. And books, like I said. Wilbur Smith ... Colleen McCullough.

Velma was rummaging in the fridge and came back with two plates laden with chocolate cake.

She passed Monica a pressure pack of cream, and Monica squirted a tall rosette of airy white onto her cake.

‘That’s what happens, in the beginnin. It’s amazing how many common interests they find. In the beginnin ...’ said Velma.

‘ … And music. He seemed to like everything that I did. Amazing really. The young ones’d call it synchronisity.’

‘Synchron ... What?’

‘I mean, we really got on well. And jokes! Did he have a cupboard full of jokes. Always there ready ... ‘ She smiled in her remembering, ‘Here’s one. Knock knock.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘Old Lady.’

‘Old Lady who?’

‘I didn’t know you could yodel!’

Velma began to shake in mirth, her rolls of fat a dancing bean chair.

‘Oh Mon, you are mad!

‘He was a dreadful driver though. It was like risking your life every time you got in beside him. He didn’t ever seem to see the cars coming. And roundabouts! What a hassle! He should be dead.’

The maggie was stabbing its beak into the grass again.

‘He was nice though …’

‘Now Mon, if it’s over, it’s over. There’s nothin’ worse than a man you don’t want ruling the roost around the place. Don’t forget the bad things Mon ...’

‘Mmmm ... But I reckon you’re wrong about only wanting a cook. One night at his place he sat me down to a beautiful meal. Tablecloth, candles and all. Fillet steak and three veg ... He looked wonderful there, in the soft light. A pretty good looker. For his age.’

The cake was all gone now, and the tea leaves were showing at the bottom of the cups.

‘Do I know ‘im Mon? Come on …’

‘Well don’t go teasing me for the rest of my life if I tell you. Promise?’

Velma drew her pudgy figures over her chest.

‘Cross me heart.’

Monica’s look was meant to pierce right through to Vel’s conscience.

‘True. Honest I won’t.’

Monica looked out of the window again, then said: ‘Harry Roberts down at the post office. You know … on the counter.’

Velma was impressed.

‘Well! I say! You devil you!’

Mon’s face turned pink.

‘Now you promised.’

‘He’d be a good catch. If you wanted a man.’

‘You think so?’

‘Well … Good job … Clean. Nice smile. Funny nose though. And ‘e could have a bit more hair.’

‘Anyway, it was a lovely meal ... It was nice of him to cook for me.’

‘Well, why not? It’s about time men turned their hands to the kitchen. Did you ever have ‘im over?

Here?’

‘Mmmm. You know when you and Fred went to Noosa for the week-end?’

‘Yeah? You crafty thing.’

Velma smoothed the floral arm of the lounge chair.

‘Did you ever … You know …’

Monica’s face turned from pale rose pink to a light shade of vermilion.

‘What? Oh ... Well ...’

‘Come on Mon. Did he ever kiss you?’

Mon balanced on the edge of her chair.

‘Mmmm … Well … Yes. He did.’

‘That night?’

Now Monica looked as though she could crawl under the chair.

‘Not then … no. But we used to talk on the phone all the time. One Friday night we’d been chatting on for a full hour and he said: “Mon, I want to see you tonight; be with you. Damn this phone nonsense.” And he asked if he could come over. Right there and then. I mean what could I do?’

Velma was enjoying herself, eager for the next revelation.

‘I don’t s’pose you minded too much.’

‘He did seem sort of ... urgent. Anyway, he came. Half an hour later. In nice slacks and his dark brown shirt. I noticed he’d put on some Old Spice ... a bit too much really.’

‘And ...’

‘Well ...’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he came in through the door. And I could smell the after shave right off. Can I have another cup, Velma?’

Velma filled Mon’s cup from the teapot.

‘It’s probly a bit cold.’

‘By this we were standing in the middle of the lounge room when he grabbed hold of me and planted a kiss on my mouth. Hands everywhere. I must admit it made me feel pretty gooey.’

‘How about you!’

‘Anyway, he was breathing deep and so was I. All tingling I was. From top to toe.’

Monica eyes were transfixed on a spot in the middle of the patterned carpet.

‘He was sweating. Then, before I knew it we were tumbling around on the spare bed. Rolling around and all hot ... Us and the Old Spice. We were there about a minute or so, just long enough for me to wonder what I was doing. I mean, it was all a bit sudden ... We’d enjoyed our talks. And our outings. But this was different. I mean. At our age.’

‘Yeah. But only a minute though?’

‘No, I mean ... We were there, on the bed. Rolling on the bed for just about a minute. Before he had my blouse off. And then my bra. And there he was with no shirt. And only his undies. And then no undies. And I had no undies.’

Velma had stopped breathing.

‘I noticed he was still limp, but he began pushin’ himself against me. I could feel the flab on me stomach. Then he sort of angled to get his paunch out of the way ... he’s got a bit of a beer gut.

He grunted and groaned, and it was as though I wasn’t there any more. He was all taken up with himself.

‘I was shy I suppose – too shy to interrupt him. I tried to help him along. Stroking and cooing. But no go. And he kept at it. And time went on. And he kept at it. A lather of perspiration he was.

By this time I was really turned off.’

Velma began breathing again.

‘I remember noticing the glow of the street light coming through the curtains, and the pattern of the bedspread. He had a small tattoo on his back too. A ship’s anchor. And then I noticed the daddy long legs spider clinging to the corner of the room. Must dust that off tomorrow, I thought to myself.’

‘Fair dinkum!’

Monica was deep in the memory and had completely forgotten her embarrassment.

‘True. Anyway, his penis was still the centre of his world. It was a real battle for him. Like forcing a wet chamois into a coke bottle. I was just the bottle.’

Velma’s rolls of fat were jitterbugging.

‘So I tried to hasten things a bit. Swinging with him, trying to get a bit of rhythm going. He grunted with each shove and sighed with each push. Occasionally he would whisper that he loved me. As though to convince himself. But you know, what I might really feel, or want, just wasn’t part of the scene at all.’

‘How amazing. The buggers are just so full of themselves.’

‘I started thinking: “I’m being used here. He’s massaging his own ego as much as anything.” I thought: “Blow this. I’m not putting up with it.” So I quietly slid off the bed and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea.’

‘Oh Mon, what a joke!’

‘Well, it might seem that way now. But it wasn’t very funny. Really. It was sad. It was a case of a man’s ego getting in the way of a perfectly good relationship.’

‘You think so?’

‘I mean, if he’d taken things more slowly you don’t know what might have happened.’ Mon sneaked a glance at her friend.

‘You know yourself Velma that a woman’s most erogenous zone is between her ears. Massage that first and there’s a chance with the rest. A woman’s got to feel good about a fella. Don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I do. ‘

‘Why don’t men learn? They need companionship too. The same as we do. A bit of caring.
Sharing of hopes and dreams.’

She pulled a colourful handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed, absentminded, at the corner of an eye. Then she stuffed the handky down the front of her dress, suddenly angry.

‘They just muck things up by thinking about themselves too much. Keeping up with their own idea about themselves.’

Mon had left the lounge behind and was pacing up and down on the carpet.

‘Me, I’d probably come good in the sexual stakes if he’d only taken things easy.’

‘And he probly would of too. You’re right Mon.’

‘Anyway, next day I was a cot case. Threw my back out with all the action, and I had to go off to the chiropractor. Haven’t been quite the same since.’

‘Oh no!’

‘No sooner had I got home from the chiropractor when he was on the phone again, apologising for being inept. Truly!’

‘You’re jokin. ‘

‘I didn’t give a damn whether he was inept or not. I didn’t want a rampaging bull in my bed right then anyway. I’d been there years ago.’

Outside in the garden, the magpie had flown high into a large gum tree.

‘A bit of gentle petting would have been the ticket. Build up the trust.’

‘Too right Mon.’

‘That way the flames will come.’

‘Too right Mon.’

‘The upshot of it was that he rang me again about two days later. Hadn’t even heard from him in between.’

‘Hurt ‘is ego I don’t wonder.’


‘You know what he said?’

‘Nope. What?’

‘You can believe this if you want to ... He said he was thinking of going to the doctor for a prescription ... for Viagra.

‘I didn’t return his calls after that.’


© June Saville 2008 All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.

Do you share personal concerns with friends? What do you think about Mon and Vel's opinions?

I'd really like to know what my male bloggy mates think of this story? I note that all of the early comments are from women ...

Lamb Chops and Apple Pie - Childhood in Australia.

This is another of my favourite short stories - sent into the blogasphere when I had few readers. Maybe you'll enjoy it. Please let me know ...
June









‘Mother’ meant warm cuddles, love and lots of praise.

She meant the whiff of fresh sponge cake in the oven of the Early Kooka, and pea soup on Sunday afternoons. She was Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. She was floor polish and the pungent smell of ironing. And the taste of Laxettes.

While my father was The Back Yard, Mother was The House.

The Back Yard was often marked by mild horror.

On the other hand, The House was filled with light and bright colours. It was serene and encouraging and good fun. Only when my father came home was there a change; when tension poked its head in the door and stayed there until he slammed that door shut on his way to work next day.

Sundays were different. That’s when my father slept all morning to get over the big working week, and we all went off to tennis in the afternoon. My mother and father had done their courting at grade tennis matches and the game meant a lot to them. They were still great players, and my sister and I used to watch them in awe as they moved around the hard yellow-coloured surface. It was a novel view of these two important people.

In those days my mother shone, with her lithe body and strong handsome face and soft eyes. My father was tenacious, and together in a doubles match they were unbeatable.

To us, the kids, the best part of the tennis afternoon was still the ‘cuppa’ halfway through. That’s when sponges and the slices and the scones appeared from baskets and disappeared along with steaming cups of tea.

For some reason my sister and I were the only children there; I suppose because my parents were a little older than the other half dozen or so local couples who played. We became the centre of attention, with the adults seemingly obliged to have fun with us, and ask about school, and pass remarks about our new dresses, or just smile.

When the shadows grew long, the men would roll up the net and throw it and the balls into a big box in the tennis shed and it would be pea soup time. My mother always put a huge boiler of pork bones, onions and split peas on the Kooka on Sunday mornings, and we came home to steaming bowls of the best pea soup in the business. She always invited old Mr Vaughan from next door to share with us, and he was good fun.

I remember Mr Vaughan sometimes asked my sister and I into his little house for lunch and served runny poached eggs topped with a slosh of blood red tomato sauce. It was a love/hate relationship. Not with Mr Vaughan; with the eggs.

Mother attracted people. They loved her for her kindnesses, her friendliness and her intelligence. I loved her for all of these things too, and also because she passed on to me her own passions which she had been unable to experience in full measure for herself.

She really adored music and won high praise with her early piano lessons. Grandmother was a musician and artist and encouraged her children. But Grandmother died when my mother was twelve, and she took with her the gentle cultural pursuits, including the music.

My grandfather was a rough labourer who drank to assuage his loss, and Mother left school and piano lessons to take up the household chores and be a substitute parent for her two brothers and sister.

So my mother encouraged me in my burgeoning love of music, and when we got our first radio set, we used to listen to the classical request programmes. Our favourite was the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. I remember crouching to press my ear against the cloth- covered speaker to hear music through the crackle coming all the way from Sydney. Mind you, I did the same to hear ‘Mrs ‘Obbs” and ‘First Light Fraser’.

Later, I was to spend my first couple of pay packets on a huge old secondhand phonograph. It was the wind up variety with needles you had to change with each play, and lived in a wonderful polished cabinet. I bought one vinyl record to begin: Mantovani’s string version of ‘Charmaine’. The Tchaikovsky came in a several record set and was beyond my reach.

I wanted to learn to play an instrument, but my father couldn’t see the point.

But I did get to run bare foot through the bushland at the back of our home. There was a sweet smelling eucalyptus tree with a gnarled white trunk and scars where the sticky red gum seeped and congealed. That was our climbing tree.

A blue tongue lizard with no tail rustled through the bracken ferns nearby, and there were flannel flowers, and egg-and-bacon, and boronia, and mountain devils. The devils were seed pods that had spiky little ears and pointed noses and we used to take them home and Mum would make miniature dolls of them. Great Big Banksia Men and gumnut babies, and Christopher Robin, and Eeyore and Pooh Bear and even Toad of Toad Hall all lived in that bit of Australian bush. They’d wandered from the books in my wardrobe.

Mother took us for walks down the beach from a very early age. We’d clamber across the rocks and peer into the little pools where magic lay. There would be shells and star fish and sea anemones with their waving feelers. They were worlds of crystal clarity and pink and cream.

We’d drag our bare toes through the sand, and scratch important drawings with a stick, and sometimes we’d find cuttlefish to take home for the canaries.

At home, when it was wash-up time, my sister and I would dry while Mum washed. It was then she would spin stories of her childhood, mostly leaving out the bad bits, and concentrating on the picnics, and the people in her street, about the children’s joy when their father brought home sweets on pay nights, and the dances at the community hall they called the Butterbox. These were dream stories from faraway, with the mists of time blending with the steam from my mother’s dishes.

Ours was a lovely house for the period, built by Dad over years, and eventually it became one of the finest in our seaside town. But it wasn’t always that way. We started off with the four of us in a garage at the back of my grandfather’s home.

When Dad did begin building the new house he was called up for civil service during the war, and we stayed in the garage. They wouldn’t let him join the forces: carpentry was an essential occupation. During the week he’d work in Sydney as a foreman on search light installations and munitions factories, and most week-ends he’d be at home building the house, with Mum alongside helping.

Months later we moved in when it was still unlined, and Mum would paint and sandpaper every spare minute during the week, so that Dad would notice a difference when he came home again.

In those days a man delivered the milk with a horse and cart and we’d rush out with a jug, and the warm milk would gush from a tap at the back. At first we had only a meat safe, a small cupboard with fly wire walls, and keeping food and milk was strictly short term.

We soon enough graduated to an ice box, with the freezing blocks brought in a corn sack from the ice works a mile away. By the time we had a Hallstrom Silent Knight kerosene refrigerator the front part of the house was finished. Cold drinks from the fridge were wondrous.

Our mother washed and polished that house until it shone, and she scattered little ornaments and keepsakes around. We always knew what she’d like for birthdays and Christmas, and each year the collection would grow. Small Wedgwood jugs and figurines and vases and fine pieces of bone china made the house hers.

On her dressing table she had a crystal tray and powder bowl, and a silver mirror backed with a picture of Queen Elizabeth roses. These things were her memories and her treasures.

One afternoon when I was eleven Dad called my sister and I into the house and greeted us with a big grin. There was going to be a visitor to our house and that visitor would be small enough to fit into a shoe box. It would be most exciting. Mum seemed quietly troubled.

I added up two and two and decided we were going to have a brother. There was never any doubt that the new baby would be a boy.

I noticed my mother became more lethargic, taking naps in the middle of the day. I’m sure I didn’t connect any weight gain to the coming birth, although I knew vaguely that mothers did carry babies. There was no discussion at all about the technicalities.

Around that time my sister and I were bouncing on our beds, quite illegally, when Wendy noticed blood on my pants. My mother was horrified, and panicked. I could not go swimming she said, and I’d have to put bits of towelling between my legs, and I’d have to soak them and rinse them out carefully and … and … and …

No suggestion that this was a perfectly normal happening in the life of a young girl, even though I had ‘come’ a bit early. I was convinced I had a terrible illness; an illness that would wrench me away from my favourite pastime, the beach. None of my girlfriends had spoken about this, and we didn’t talk about sex and suchlike anyway. I was in despair.

I didn’t put births and periods together in my mind until I bought a book at the newsagents probably four years later. I could then tell my worried sister that no, she would not have a baby if she kissed her first boyfriend.

So I had no real idea what was going on with my Mum all the way through her pregnancy, and reality set in only months later when we were called out of class at school one afternoon. My father had come to pick us up early: our brother had arrived. He was beside himself. A son filled a void in his life. Girl children were really of not much account. But boys … !

Dad was the only boy child in a family of four, and his father had doted on the girls and even bashed him to make him a ‘man’. He always had to work extraordinarily hard for his father and received no tenderness in return. When his own first two children were girls it was too much to bear, and he had to wait another nine years for a son.

Girls were a burden and boys were mates. My father rarely showed any animation when he was around us and I don’t remember him making any toys or spending time playing. My sister and I often asked for a swing and I wanted a book shelf, but as children we never got them.

Dad was the good provider though and we always had excellent food, clothing and shelter.

When my brother arrived we suddenly saw a new side to him. He played with my brother and made him things and they actually had real conversations as he grew older. He was spirited when my brother was around. When he was with us he withdrew into himself and ignored our presence. My sister and I were astounded at first, and later we just got angry.

On the other hand, Mother loved us all, and there was never a shadow of favouritism. Somehow we grew up loving our brother fiercely, and jealousy wasn’t part of the scene. I’m sure that was her doing. Mother the miracle-worker.

Dad always smoked and we always breathed it in. We didn’t know then what tobacco smoke could do. Later, I blamed my mother’s illness on a combination of this smoke and the asbestos in the fibro sheeting in the cottages Dad built. She began coughing a hacking cough, and could not breathe properly. She gave up tennis and lost weight, and became old before her time: transformed from a vibrant vigorous woman to a tiny gaunt and feeble physical wreck.

The doctors were puzzled. They told her to do away with her pet birds, suspecting they were implicated, and she travelled to Sydney for all sorts of horrific tests. A hospital technician, shaking his head, told one of my aunts that he saw no reason why elderly people should undergo such tortures, especially as they were unlikely to do them any good.

But Mum’s nimble brain remained active, and when they took her to a nursing home her eyes were the same as they had ever been … intelligent, insightful and kindly.

The staff loved her too and helped with little personal things as often as they could.

My sister arranged a small stand with pot plants outside her window and each day the gardener set a can of water out there for her. Mum would struggle out of bed and to a chair placed near the stand. She’d settle painfully onto the seat, breath whistling reluctantly into her lungs and out again.

Then, when she had recovered a little, this wizened little person would water each plant separately, admiring the flowers and scratching around for weeds. In between plants she would drop back into the chair to replenish her strength.

When she could no longer do this, nor care for herself in any way Mother decided to die.

And she did just that.

She asked the nursing home chaplain to visit, and made sure she saw everyone she loved, seemingly making peace in her world. Then she ceased to eat and she ceased to drink.

She lay there for many days, as determined in her decision as she had been throughout her life. I saw tears come to her doctor’s eyes because the law wouldn’t allow him to shorten her misery.

‘One day there will be a way for doctors to help people such as your mother,’ he said.

All we were allowed to do was hold her hand and watch her battle to die.

Our mother asked us to put her ashes beneath a Queen Elizabeth rose bush, with flowers just like those on the back of her hand mirror. I have such a rose bush in my garden now, planted there the week she died. There is always a flower on her rose bush whenever I am troubled. It never lets me down.

© June Saville 2008. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.


Do you still have your mother close by? What's special about her? What did you think of my story?