Mother of Ten Page 6

  Georgie was struggling to get down so Gus lowered him to the ground and led him by the hand to a back passenger door. My father called to me over his shoulder.

  “Come on, Brigid.”

  “They won’t all fit into the back seat,” said Mum with a laugh.

  But we did. We squashed and prodded and leaned and squeezed and found room.

  Mum made one final protest. “The baby’s asleep on the veranda.”

  The most recent addition to our family was always called ‘the baby’ or, in the case of the twins, ‘the babies’, until a new baby arrived. This particular baby was my sister, Irene.

  “Gus’ll keep an eye on her. Won’t you, Gus?”

  Gus nodded. “Yeah. She’ll be as right as rain with me.”

  Finally, Mum admitted defeat and gave in with a smile and a shake of her head. Dad hurried over to her.

  “Well,” he said, gently steering her toward the open driver’s side door. “What are we waiting for?”

  Mum allowed him to lead her to the car. With some hesitation, she slid in behind the steering wheel. Dad closed the door, checked that both back doors were properly shut, opened the front passenger side door and got in. He turned to his brood of kids in the back seat and gave us a conspiratorial wink.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” he said.

  He slid across the bench seat closer to Mum. She fingered the steering wheel and looked at Dad with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Well, what do I do now?” I could see she was beginning to enjoy herself.

  Dad beamed at her. Patiently, he explained the function of the pedals and levers.

  Mum released the handbrake. The car jumped forward. It rocked and lurched and hopped like a kangaroo. Mum laughed and eventually managed to settle the car into a smooth motion. Then, with Dad’s confident hands on the steering wheel to guide her, she manoeuvred a turn so that we were heading toward the gate. The car rattled down the driveway. Dad grinned over at Gus who waved at us as we passed. Mum’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “C’mon Mum, you’re doing well. We’ll take her along the track for a bit.”

  Mum was too absorbed in her task to answer. The car seemed to have a mind of its own.

  “Slow her down a little as you go through the gate.”

  Mum looked at the controls, unsure what to do.

  “Ease your foot off the throttle,” he said.

  She did as he instructed. The car slowed as it passed through the gateway. Dad’s hands turned the steering wheel so that they made a right hand turn into Duggans Road. Turning left would have taken us to up to the highway and my mother was definitely not ready for that. Surprisingly, the car rolled along the gravel road without hopping or jerking. Mum pressed her foot down gently on the throttle and we picked up speed slightly. Dad removed his hands from the steering wheel. Instinctively, Mum tightened her grip. He smiled and reassured her.

  “It’s all right, love. You’re doing fine.”

  She nodded and seemed to relax. Sitting in the back seat as we passed the trees on one side of the road and the green paddocks of the farm on the other, I tried to forget about my brothers fidgeting and squashing into me and imagined myself to be a grand dame on a country drive.

  My daydream was interrupted by a sudden bump. The car seemed to leap into the air. We were heading towards the broad trunk of an old gum tree. The tree trunk was getting closer and closer. Mum’s eyes were shut tight. Dad grabbed the steering wheel. I heard the sharp snapping of dry twigs under the car wheels. Bump. The car jumped and rocked. The engine died. We had stopped within inches of the broad gum tree.

  “That was fun, Mum,” said Bobby.

  “Yeah. Can we do it again?” said Maxie.

  Mum’s hands were still gripping the steering wheel even though Dad had taken over the steering. She opened her eyes cautiously, then widened them at the sight of the tree in front of the windscreen. Dad removed his hands from the wheel. Mum looked across at him. He took off his beret and ran one hand through his thick black hair then returned her glance with a bemused smile. She grinned. Then she laughed. Her laugh was never far from the surface. As a child I did not realise laughter could be used as a release from tension or anxiety. Dad’s smile widened to a grin.

  “Well,” he said. “We’d better get this old girl back on the road. I’ll get out and crank her up.”

  “We can help, Dad,” said Bobby.

  “Not today, son,” said Dad. “You kids stay where you are.”

  Bobby and Maxie looked crestfallen but they knew better than to argue with their father. While Dad was at the front of the car valiantly encouraging ‘the old girl’ to kick back into life with vigorous turns of the crank handle, Mum followed the various technical instructions he called to her. “Pull the choke out.” “Foot on the throttle; gently.” “Push the choke in a bit.”

  “Keep her ticking over,” he called as the car spluttered and coughed out smoke through the exhaust. Finally, the motor kicked into life.

  Bobby and Maxie cried, “Hooray!”

  Mum slid across the seat to the passenger side. I guess she had had enough of driving for one day. Dad slipped into the driver’s seat and looked across at Mum.

  “That’ll be the hardest thing for you to learn; using the crank handle.”

  “It certainly doesn’t look easy.”

  “It’ll be okay once you get the hang of it, love. Besides, Bobby’s probably strong enough to do it for you.”

  “Yes. I can do it, Mum.”

  “Me too, Mum. I can help crank it,” said Maxie.

  Eventually, with my father’s patient guidance my mother learned to drive the Erskine. She could even manage the crank handle, but preferred Bobby or Maxie to do it.

  I recall several unfortunate incidents over the years when my mother was at the wheel of the car. No one was ever injured although trees sometimes changed shape. Dad would survey the damage and simply scratch his head in amazement as though he thought Mum had achieved a remarkable feat in getting the car halfway up the trunk of a tree. They laughed these mishaps off, as they did with most calamities.

  That’s what our life was like; humorous incidents and dramatic events followed each other closely. Though financially poor, as a family we were rich in experiences that connected us. Everything revolved around the family. Our small two bedroom house overflowed with children who raced in and out of doorways, climbed through windows and up onto the roof, splashed along creek beds and ran wild across the green paddocks of the farm gleefully dispersing sheep and rabbits.

  As our lives somersaulted on, we kids were completely oblivious to the existence of our three half-siblings elsewhere in Australia. My mother must have yearned to talk to someone about them. She must have wondered daily about how they were doing.

  “During the years when my son was a baby, I used to look at other babies around his age and wonder how he was doing and what he looked like. These thoughts still continue today...” comments a mother whose child was taken from her at birth. (Releasing the Past: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies)

  I think sometimes we must have reminded Mum of Bertie, Audrey and Noel because I occasionally observed a fleeting look in her eyes that I did not understand at the time, that seemed out of place in the context. Perhaps unseen ghosts from her past life caught her unawares.

  Chapter 8

  I wonder if Mum’s habit of nurturing everything she could find resulted, at least in part, from the loss of her first three children. She always seemed to have some young creature in her care. In the spring she would walk around the paddocks next door and check for lambs that needed mothering. When ewes had multiple births, they would sometimes reject the extra lambs. Mum would gather the orphaned lambs and the lambs of sick ewes and bottle feed them. Sometimes she would bring a weak lamb inside and make a cosy bed for it in an old cardboard box and keep it near the stove where it would be warm. Actually, I think the young sheep quickly caught on that Mum was a soft t
ouch because the group of woolly white lambs jostling each other for her attention often included those that did not need a surrogate mother.

  On occasion, a sick lamb might share the warmth of the stove with a box of fluffy yellow chickens. These were my favourites. My mother kept them in an old shoe box with holes in the lid which she placed near the stove. For chickens that had just hatched, Mum positioned their shoebox on one of the side bricks, part of the hearth in which the stove was set, where it was warmest.

  Mum loved birds of any kind and delighted in watching the tiny blue wrens, robin red breasts and little grey thrushes that often flew into her garden. If she found a bird with a broken leg or wing she would try to nurse it back to health. She taught us to distinguish one bird from the other, especially the difference between a sparrow and a starling. In those days we had slingshots. Mum did not want us to mistakenly shoot sparrows thinking they were starlings. The only birds she would allow us to shoot at were starlings because they were pests. She usually had a pet bird, sometimes a canary and at other times a blue budgerigar. It seems to me the budgies were always called Bluey. As far as I can remember, Mum did not give the new budgies new names.

  She also loved dogs and most other animals. However, one creature Mum did not show much affection for was the snake. She was afraid of them, as were most people in Australia at that time. ‘The only good snake is a dead snake’ was a mantra often heard. Snakes in the bush were part of our lives and Dad had taught us not to touch, catch or try to kill them. We came across snakes several times when we were gathering wood for the fire. I recall one occasion when we saw a black snake curled up under a log.

  “Stand still,” said Dad, keeping his eyes on the reptile while holding one arm out to block Bobby, Maxie and me from moving forward.

  He slowly reached up to his fedora hat which sometimes replaced the well worn navy beret, took it off and carefully lowered it before finally letting it fall to the ground between him and the snake.

  We stood perfectly still and quiet behind Dad. I used my father’s legs as a shield while my brothers held their bodies slightly to the side so that they could see the snake.

  “Move backwards slowly,” said Dad.

  I kept my eyes closed as we inched backwards. My heart was pounding.

  “It’s moving,” hissed Bobby.

  I gripped my father’s trouser leg.

  “It’s gonna get us,” said Maxie.

  “Shh,” said Dad.

  When Dad stopped moving backward, we all stopped. I tried to shut my eyes even tighter as I imagined the snake’s gleaming black body slithering towards us. I couldn’t understand why we had stopped moving. I wanted to run - very fast.

  “It’s gone,” said Maxie.

  I didn’t open my eyes. I did not trust my brothers. Maxie might be playing a trick on me.

  “All right,” said Dad. “You can relax now.”

  I opened my eyes at last. Bobby made to move toward Dad’s hat but Dad put a restraining hand on him.

  “Careful,” he said.

  He picked up a long branch and poked at the hat, lifting it up and reeling it in like a fish on a line.

  “Come on,” said Dad. “We have enough wood for now.”

  We carefully gathered up our bundles of dry sticks that Mum called morning wood, probably because she used it to light the fire in the morning, and returned home.

  Snakes in the bush were one thing. Having snakes around the house was a different matter altogether. Any of us kids could easily be bitten, either by accidentally treading on a snake or because of our own foolishness. Besides, snakes had been known to venture into people’s houses. So when my brothers discovered a nest of slim, silver baby snakes under the wooden platform at the end of the veranda on which the rainwater tank stood, Dad had to do something. I watched the writhing bundle of hatchlings with revulsion. From the look on my mother’s face, she apparently felt the same. She gathered all of us up onto the veranda. Bobby and Maxie protested but she was firm.

  “Let your father handle it,” she said.

  Dad pushed his hat back and scratched his head.

  “I can get rid of these hatchlings easily enough,” he said. “I’m worried there might be an adult around somewhere.”

  He used a long pole to lift the loose timber and rocks under the water tank, keeping his distance lest a snake dart out and strike at him. Eventually he satisfied himself that there were no adult snakes hiding anywhere.

  “All right, Bobby and Max, you can come and help me now,” said Dad.

  My brothers were down from the veranda like a shot.

  “Keep your eyes peeled and yell if you see an adult snake,” he said.

  He then used a shovel to drag the bundle of baby snakes from under the tank stand out into the open where he could kill them. By now the full realisation of what had to happen to the hatchlings must have hit Mum.

  “Dad,” she said, before my father even had a chance to raise the shovel to strike.

  He looked at her.

  “They’re only babies,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “We can’t leave them, Mum. It’s too dangerous.”

  She didn’t say anything else but held his eyes. Something passed between them. Finally, Dad nodded.

  “Max,” he said. “Go and fetch me a hessian bag from the shed. Bobby, keep your eyes peeled for that snake.”

  So, while Mum took the rest of us inside the house, Dad, with help from my brothers, bagged the baby snakes. Later, he took the squirming bag out into the bush.

  I don’t remember seeing my father kill any snakes but my brothers did. They recounted one slaying with emphasis on the gruesome details.

  “Dad just whacked it on the head with the shovel,” said Bobby.

  “Hard,” said Maxie. “He whacked it hard.”

  “Yeah, its tail was flicking around like crazy.”

  “You shoulda seen it. Dad just kept whacking ‘til it was dead.”

  “Dead as a doornail.”

  Chapter 9

  Even my father could not overcome the calamity that arrived in 1958. Because of my habit of eavesdropping on my parents, I was the first of the kids to know about it.

  One night when I was supposed to be in bed I was crouched underneath the half open window of the kitchen, part of which was now converted to my bedroom after all the meals for the day were done with. I had an excellent vantage point for listening. On the other side of the window, my parents sat on the veranda playing cards in the light of the kerosene lantern. This was a favourite past time of theirs and they taught us kids to play games like Euchre and Five Hundred. But when their labours were done and the kids were all finally in bed, they enjoyed some time together. This particular night I heard my mother quizzing my father about his uncharacteristic tiredness. He then admitted to other symptoms of possible illness.

  “There’s blood,” he said, “when I go to the toilet.”

  There was a short silence before my mother responded.

  “Well, you’d better get yourself off to the doctor, hadn’t you?”

  My father, who was usually the one to give Mum strength, would not have admitted his symptoms to her like that unless he sensed something was seriously wrong.

  “The sooner they find out what it is, the sooner they’ll be able to treat you. You’re as strong as an ox. You’ll be better in no time,” she said.

  “I hope so, love.” His tone was serious.

  Later that week, my father went to the doctor who gave him a thorough examination and took a blood sample to be sent to Melbourne for testing. My parents then had to wait for the results of the tests.

  When the results arrived, the doctor telephoned our house. It was one of those lazy days that uncurl slowly like a koala waking from a deep sleep. My mother was in the yard feeding the chooks. The boys were off somewhere playing. I was sitting on the verandah step minding two-year-old Irene. A gentle sun warmed our bodies. The day’s tranquillity was termina
ted by a shrill ringing from inside the house.

  The phone had been installed when Pop became ill. My father, with a little help from my grandmother, Olive, managed to scrape up the money needed. It was a heavy black contraption which scared the daylights out of me. My parents did not use the phone on a regular basis because of the expense. It was primarily for my grandmother to call Dad if she needed him.

  The sound of the black Bakelite monster echoed through the house. I got up and went into the kitchen where the telephone sat, squat and fat on an old dresser. I stared at the instrument but it was no longer ringing. As I turned to go back outside, it blasted its tune again. I jumped in startled surprise and fear before running out onto the veranda. In the distance, I could see my mother scooping food scraps from her ballooned apron and scattering them around near the chook house. A flock of pecking hens surrounded her. I called out.

  “Muu...um! Muu...um!”

  Her head turned toward the house. Another shrill ring came from inside. I called again with more urgency in my voice.

  “Muu...um!”

  She called back. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s ringing! It’s ringing, Mum.”

  She laughed. “Pick it up then. Quick, love. I’ll be right there.”

  Mum emptied her apron, brushed the remaining scraps from it and hurried toward the house. I went back into the kitchen and tentatively reached for the black handset, hesitating before placing my hand on it, afraid the loud shrill sound would blast from it again. Then I pounced on it and quickly picked it up and held it to my ear, the way my father had showed me when he had demonstrated how to use it. I listened and waited. Nothing. I pressed it harder up against my ear straining to hear. Suddenly a booming male voice crackled through the handset and frightened me.

  “Hello?” the voice said.

  I dropped the handset and ran from the room, colliding with my mother as she hurried along the veranda and into the kitchen to the telephone.

  The doctor explained he had the results of the blood tests and would like to see Dad to discuss them. Mum could glean no clues from his friendly but professional tone.