Whenever a north wind moaned in the summer it caught the stench from dye factories, oil refineries, tanneries, rendering works and abattoirs lining the Maribyrnong River, spreading an amalgam of noxious odours over the flat, brown, clay baked suburb of Junction.
You could choke. Mrs. Carmody, round in Castley Crescent said old people sometimes did. When it blew, housewives shut the doors and windows of their Ministry houses. Those who had them, pulled down their blinds, to escape a smell so pungent it had taste and colour to it.
Some kids walked to Ballarat road to wait for the bus that would take them to the Armsprawn baths, spend the day in the water, and if a late change arrived, come home in the cool afternoon sunburned and sore, the hair of blondes like Maureen, dyed to a green hue from the chemicals in the pool.
On arrival at the bus stop they were surprised to find a small crowd gathered to watch the Olympic torch relay travel to the MCG, awaiting the runner in his baggy white shorts, tee shirt and Donlap Volares, who soon loped into view. A tall manly figure from one of the colleges in the eastern suburbs, he had sweet regular features, muscled limbs, and a wide white smile. His father had driven him out to the Sunray Town Hall to join the team that would share the relay through this western wilderness. Neither parent nor son had visited this part of Melbourne before, and never would again.
In the young man’s later career as a solicitor, as he did not specialise in criminal law, Junction was rarely mentioned. On those occasions he immediately conjured up memories of a blistering north wind, timorous silent people, a foul cloying stench of noxious industry, and was again pleased he lived in Surreythorn.
The kids having forgotten, or perhaps not having been told about the relay, were happy to observe the runner’s progress while they waited for the bus. A fire truck, police vehicles, Olympic officials of various ilk and sundry local dignitaries in big motor cars, escorted the runner fore and aft. For a moment a few of the kids thought the Queen was visiting as she had done two years before, deciding this time to honour Junction with her presence. The appearance of the runner holding aloft the smoking replica of a miner’s lamp, soon decided that.
“Perhaps it’s the Queen?” Brian, aged eleven had said. He had a striped bath towel around his neck, sunglasses hiding his mild eyes. “Remember when we lived in Marivale and she came down Mount Alexander Road? The nuns heard the cheering from St Hortense’s”
“You’re the only queen here” said his sister Maureen, aged twelve. Her fox terrier hazel eyes glinted with malice, she set her lips in the self satisfied way she always did whenever she thought she had stumbled upon a truth.
Behind the sunglasses Brian ignored the taunt, not entirely sure what it meant, even though Pop, had shouted it earlier in the morning. Brian had swept into the kitchen wearing a voluminous dressing gown made from heavy grey stuff with a maroon window pane check, gathered and pleated, with big red buttons. Maureen had overheard the epithet the way she overheard everything, and saved it up as was her wont, against the time she could use it. Brian thought the garment was just something to wear.
The gown had been in a parcel brought by Leo Limerick of Salvation De Pedro, who visited the house every couple of months with a food hamper or vouchers, sometimes bed linen, and in the winter, arranged for firewood. No one else wanted the ugly robe so Brian claimed it as his own. The only other item he made use of was a pair of boots Leo provided. Brian’s mother Gloria said she was certain he would play football if only he had some boots. Gloria took them to the boot maker to have the stops banged into the soles and heels. Not having played before, Brian was very bad at football and was taken off the ground during the first quarter for holding the ball. He did not know what else to do with it. Following a kick to a thigh from one of his own team, he sat on the sidelines in the still shiny boots until the end of the game and never played again.
Both children thought that Leo was keen on Gloria, and although she flirted with a careful piety because Leo, with holy pictures in his Gladstone bag and rosary beads in his fob pocket was very Catholic, they knew nothing would come of it.
Leo had started to visit the family after Sister Mary Josepha found out from another child that Maureen and Brian were not coming to school, because until Pension day, Gloria did not have the bus fares to get them to Armsprawn.
He was very religious, a bachelor of late middle age looking to marry, and thought that a penniless widow aged forty would see value in him, and Gloria was still pretty. She had already made one bad marriage however, and when her husband died three years ago, she determined not to repeat the mistake of marrying an older man she did not love.
There was Ken Harrison, a friend of their Marivale neighbours, Esmae and Clem Felmingham. Ken lived alone in a big brick house in Aspentone, and owned a bathing box on the foreshore. Gloria seemed to Brian to be cross when he did not want to take up Ken’s kind offer of a weekend at the box, so that he could take him fishing.
A dinghy was lashed into the ceiling of the box, a pair of oars crossed over the lumpy bed jammed against one wall, and maritime artefacts such as lifebuoys, signal lamps, nets, fishing rods and the like, covered the other walls. A kerosene fridge kept the beer cold, always with room for fresh bait.
“Wouldn’t you like to stay this close to the sea, and hear it pounding all night?” Gloria said, as they watched the green water crash against the sea wall.
“No” said Brian.
“Why not? Are you afraid of the sea?” She said coldly with her blue eyed stare, thinking of the big brick house.
“I just don’t. That’s all” said Brian. He did not like Ken.
“Coward” said Maureen
Ken, who smelled of stale beer and cheap roly weed, had a lined seamy face with a skin tag on one eyelid, eyes yellow and dull from booze. Always, it seemed, a thin cigarette rolled with Bally Ho paper stained with brown spittle, was stuck to his bottom lip. He habitually wore a slouch hat from his days as a Rat of Tobruk.
On a Saturday afternoon, as Maureen and Brian sat in Ken’s black De Soto parked outside the Waning Moon Hotel, Ken came out and gave them each a bottle of Boon Spa lemonade and a Chocko Roll, warning them to behave themselves in that big landing craft of a car. He and Gloria eventually came out of the hotel lounge and they were off. On the way, Gloria, dizzy from all the cold beer, the yawing and pitching of the great vehicle, vomited all over her seat. “Arr, Cripes” said Ken. From the front gate, Ken said he would not come in on this occasion.
“We don’t see the Felminghams anymore since we left Marivale” Gloria said a while later, “And I suppose Ken finds it difficult to get all the way over here.”
The Felminghams visited Gloria only once, a while after the family moved to Junction. They found her in the barren, flat backyard; empty save a large metal drum sitting four square in the centre, which served as an incinerator. She was feeding pictures and framed photographs into it, which had decorated the lounge room in Marivale.
Her parents wedding portrait went in, her Irish Grandfather, full beard, dark suit, striped tie and celluloid collar, killed at the railway gates in Craigie lea, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, all looking disconsolate at being thus immolated. In a heavy cedar frame, Pop’s Great Uncle Patrick, a handsome Irish Canon murdered in Dunmanway by the Black and Tans. Elegant in flowing Soutanne, elaborate lace Amice, and Biretta, he offered his perfect profile to the now roaring fire
Distressed and shocked by the look on Gloria’s face, eyes shining as she wreaked the vandalism, Clem and Esmae thought they had better clear out before Pop came back from the pub. They never came again.
Maureen told Brian she once found a book in Clem’s garage, where he tinkered with his Morris 10 on Sunday afternoons. Maureen had been able to observe Clem thumbing through the book, by keeping still while squinting through a broken window covered with chicken wire. The book had pictures of naked men wearing sandshoes, and naked women wearing high heels with ribbon ties at the ankles, like the black suede pair Auntie Gwendolyn had. The men and women were playing games like quoits, shuttlecock and volley ball. Both sexes had big white rumps and heavy limbs. Clem jammed the book behind some paint tins Maureen said, when he went to find Esmae about something urgent.
“You couldn’t see anything rude” Maureen said, “It’s smudgy in those parts. See for yourself, I couldn’t put it back in the garage because Fellmo came out, so I ran home and hid it under your mattress. It’s yours now, if you say anything it will be a mortal sin”
Gloria’s Cousin, Ralph, whose wife had died the year before, called in occasionally to see how she was managing. He took them to the Drive In on Rosamond Road, on opening night. They could not get in, as the “House Full” sign went up almost straight away. Ralph drove his Hillman Minx over to the Marivale Theatre in Onion Road to see “Rock Around The Clock.”
Gloria was worried because the audience was largely made up of noisy, tough looking young people, wearing clothes which accentuated the shape of their bodies. During a scene when one of the actresses, describing a dress she was wearing said, “It spells S-E-X”, the noisy young toughs all shouted out “SEX”, drumming their feet on the floor, and cackled with laughter at their own bravado. Gloria, horrified, wanted to leave there and then. She supposed they were these Bodgies and Widgies one was reading about in the Argus, and hearing about on 3AW.
Usually, she went to the pictures only in the city, to the Regent or the State where one never called out or stamped one’s feet. She told her family later it was the worst night of her life, the raw animal behaviour of the crowd unsettling her so deeply she hardly slept. When Ralph was driving them home to Junction he kept asking Gloria if the kids were asleep. “Maureen’s wide awake, the little miss.” she said, noticing the child’s gleaming eyes reflecting the traffic and the street lights. Waiting in anticipation of what she might see.
Ralph worked at Montello Chemical Plant out on Geelong Road and sometimes brought things he thought they could use. A carving knife, a five gallon glass jar, a thick length of Strasbourg sausage that must have weighed over two pounds. The kids and Pop always knew when he’d called to say “G’day” by the odd items he left behind. He called usually on Pension day when Pop met his sisters, “The Aunts”, for lunch and a few beers at the London Hotel, and the kids were at school. Ralph eventually married a woman called Druzka whose husband had been accidentally killed in the Blizzard Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme, and stopped coming around.
Before the last “Widows Association” Christmas party, Gloria said this time they would not have to travel to the Zoo in the back of a hired furniture van with all the other widows and children, as they had previously. She added that Mr Cheatley, whose wife was not well, did not get out much, and never went to these things, would be taking them in his Armstrong Siddley. In the months prior to the party, Mr Cheatley had been calling occasionally to see how they were getting along.
The car was a luxurious vehicle, just the sort an Executive of a Charitable Organization would drive. Brian felt like Royalty when the tyres crunched over the gravel driveway to the main entrance, people staring into the car trying to see who was so important. Brian looked straight ahead the way he thought he should, resisting a magisterial wave.
The people in charge of the gifts had his age wrong, the zero was missing. When he went up to receive his present, he glumly accepted the plastic toy and cardboard book suitable for a one year old and scuttled away from Father Christmas, whose beard, Brian could plainly see, was attached to his cheeks with some sort of green braid.
They had Maureen’s age wrong also, and upon receiving an expensive Chemistry set, she stared blankly at the box and hissed to Gloria that she did not want it. Thankfully Gloria found a pleasant young man who was able to exchange it for something more feminine and suitable. Mr Cheatley called a couple of times afterwards. Then, as his wife had begun to feel more like being up and about, ceased his visits entirely.
The bus dropped the kids a short walk from the pool, and once there they went straight out onto the deck as they wore their bathers beneath their clothes, to save getting undressed in the sheds. Brian hid his sunglasses in his towel and jumped into the water. They showed each other how they could dive from the three metre board, and how long they could hold their breath under water. It was hard to swim for any distance as the pool became very crowded, so they contented themselves with restrained skylarking and keeping cool.
When Brian got out of the water to dry himself he found that his sunglasses had been removed from his towel, which was to be expected. He looked up to see Albert Sunday wearing them, waving from the diving board to no one in particular, before bombing into the crowd of swimmers below. He came to the surface without wearing the glasses, which was also to be expected.
Albert Sunday was the son among the three children of George and Hilda Sunday, the English family who lived in Brian’s street. Their houses shared the same design, except that the Sunday’s house was sited down the block, rather than across it, as was Brian’s. When the houses were built, the two and three bedroom designs were alternately sited throughout the seemingly endless, treeless estate. The Ministry thought that the streetscape would be less uniform and boring that way, except that they all shared the same low post and rail fences, painted with black sump oil, and cyclone wire gates painted Indian red. They were the same, only different.
Albert had two sisters, Lorelei and Linda. Lorelei was very beautiful with long blonde hair, flawless pale skin, and eyes Brian thought, the same unusual shade of violet shared by Elizabeth Tyler and Princess Martinette. Lorelei had gone to Sydney when she was seventeen, and came home occasionally. The last time accompanied by two broad shouldered sailors, who stayed until the Shore Patrol came at six thirty one morning and took them away. Maureen was able to elicit from Linda, who was a coarse unpleasant child, that Lorelei was engaged to a man who owned a nightclub in King’s Cross, which probably explained the expensive clothes she wore.
Brian didn’t speak to Albert often. No one did. Maureen, never. Albert had a defect that made his face go into all sorts of strictures when speaking, which Brian found embarrassing. People avoided having to engage Albert in conversation because it was so time consuming. On the day Gloria and her family moved in, Albert came to the door and eventually asked if her “bruvva” could come and play. This “bruvva” Gloria assumed, was Brian, so she sent him off with Albert to get him out of the house. The two boys walked around the roads. Albert sang “The Junction Song” which he was clearly inventing while they roamed as far as the river, torpid and green with industrial sludge, past the slaughter yards where cattle patiently waited to be killed.
Albert took him to meet his mother, who sat motionless in a tattered arm chair in her darkened lounge room, wide hips jammed into the seat, staring at Brian.
“This is Brian” Albert said, eventually. “He don’t know how cows have babies”
“He’ll soon learn” his mother said, wearily. Brian said he’d better be going as it was getting late. Hilda impassive and immobile watched him leave, seeming to enjoy his embarrassment as he stumbled to the front door, struggled with a lock he could not open, retreated, ran down the central passageway to the back door and fled.
In the late afternoon Maureen and Brian arrived home, where Gloria and Pop were listening to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, on the wireless. Gloria lay on the couch in the hot lounge room in her petticoat, a faded pinafore over it for modesty. In a husky voice Prince Philip said eleven words about the Olympiad.
Pop said “What a waste of taxpayer’s money, ten thousand miles, just for that”. He went to the ice chest for a bottle of beer.
Life went on. A shuttle in a loom. Backward, forward. Up, down. Weft and warp. Bright colours, muted colours. Mistakes made, sometimes corrected, sometimes not. The tapestry grew under unseen hands rippling in the winds, toward an end which hung below the unchanging, motionless horizon.
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