My Place

by Sally Morgan

  I loved spending weekends with her, she’d spoil me, and Molly Skinner was always pleased to see me.

  Every Saturday afternoon, Mum would give me threepence to go to the pictures with Noreen and Doreen. We had great fun. All the kids from school would be there and we’d yell and scream.

  The Colourpatch was really busy on Sundays, so Mum often got me to help out with the waitressing.

  The Americans were lovely, they’d leave large tips for me under their plates. All the other waitresses had to hand their tips in, but I was told I was allowed to keep mine. I think it was because Mum was such a good cook. She always gave everyone double helpings and nothing was too much for her. I think she felt sorry for a lot of the servicemen there because some of them were only boys. It was a really happy time for me.

  One Sunday night I arrived back at the Hewitts to be met with serious faces from the whole family. Mrs Hewitt took Mum into the lounge and I had to sit out in the hall.

  ‘You’re in big trouble,’ Warren whispered. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. Then the youngest Hewitt boy came out and said, ‘Gladys, you’ve sinned!’

  A few minutes later, Mrs Hewitt came out and said, ‘Will you please come in, Gladys?’

  I looked at Mum, she was sitting in a chair beside the open fireplace, she looked completely dumbfounded.

  ‘Now, Gladys,’ said Mrs Hewitt, ‘I am going to ask you a question and I want you to answer truthfully. Did you go to the pictures, did you enter that house of sin on Saturday afternoon?’ I couldn’t think of what to say. ‘It’s no use trying to deny it,’ she said. ‘One of the ladies from the church saw you.’

  That was when I hung my head in shame. I didn’t feel sinful. I’d had a great time, but I felt it was expected of me. Mrs Hewitt turned to Mum and said, ‘I don’t think it will be suitable for Gladys to stay here any longer. I’m trying to turn her into a good Christian and you’re letting her sin on Saturday afternoons!’

  Mum just looked at me. She’d never heard of pictures being sinful before.

  Mrs Hewitt pointed to the corner of the room and said, ‘Gladys, I’ve taken the liberty of packing your suitcases, I think you’d better go now.’

  Mum and I went back to Cottesloe. We didn’t know what to say to each other, neither one of us could think of a thing. For the first time in our lives, we were together. I don’t think Mum knew how to handle it. She was too scared to realise that it had actually happened. She was my mother and I was her daughter and we could be a family now. I think she was afraid to get used to it in case I got taken off her again. She knew Aboriginal people who’d never seen their children again.

  Miss Skinner was very happy to have me there.

  ***

  I finished school at the end of 1943, I was sixteen. All my friends were going on to business college, but I knew that wasn’t possible for me.

  I spent my time helping Mum in the restaurant. I was put in charge of making up milkshakes in the lolly shop attached to the Colourpatch. I took great pride in my work and people would come from miles to buy a milkshake off me. I experimented with the contents all the time and would put in great dollops of ice-cream. Sometimes, I put in so much the mixer wouldn’t turn. They took me off the milkshakes eventually, I don’t think they paid.

  After a while, Alice got me a job on trial with a florist in Claremont at six shillings a week. It was a funny set-up in those days. If you were monied people or if you had a name, like Drake-Brockman, it was like ‘Open Sesame’. People ran after you, they rushed to serve you. I think it was a hang-up from Victorian England, though there are a lot of people who still do it today.

  I was very excited about my job, I used to ride from Cottesloe to Claremont on an old bike.

  The other junior who worked there was great. She was as fair as I was dark. She warned me about my new boss. ‘She’s a bit of an old cow,’ she said. ‘She’ll leave money on the floor just to see if you’ll pinch it, so watch out.’

  Sure enough, I was told to sweep the shop and there, on the black oiled floor, was a two shilling piece. I gave it to the boss, she feigned surprise and put it in the till. A week later, there was another two shilling piece on the floor. I handed that in too. That was when I was told that, from then on, I was on staff and would get ten shillings a week.

  Mrs Sales, my boss, was a real martinet. Her husband was a bootmaker and worked at the back of the shop.

  He reminded Kathy and me of a little frightened mouse. Sometimes he’d sneak out and have a cigarette in the old wooden toilet down the back. Mrs Sales disapproved of him smoking, so he always made sure she didn’t see him go.

  One day she came storming into the shop with an old cigarette butt she’d found. She accused Kathy and I of smoking on her time. She searched our bags for cigarettes. I never smoked, but Kathy did, she always hid hers behind the back door. I suppose it never occurred to our boss that her husband was the culprit, because she’d banned him from smoking. He never questioned her authority about anything else.

  Mrs Sales had another florist shop on the corner of Broadway. I used to catch the trolleybus down and take flowers for them to sell. The junior there was called Violet, she was a nice girl and we became friends.

  Kathy, Violet and I were all about the same age. We got plenty of attention from the Americans, because they were always going into florist shops to order corsages for their girlfriends. They were very different to Australian men, much more polite.

  About a year later, Kathy became engaged to an American sailor, so we’d often go out to the pictures with his friends. I had a great time until they got serious, Americans always wanted to get engaged. For the first time in my life, I felt free. I didn’t have to answer for everything I did. Of course, Mum tried to be very strict with me. She was so suspicious. It was all very innocent, but she kept saying I didn’t know what the world was like or what men were like. I realise now that she was right. I had had a very protected life. I stopped telling her when I was going out and who I was going out with, it only made her worry.

  It wasn’t long before I’d become very good friends with one of the customers from the shop. She was an English lady called Lois, her husband had been imprisoned by the Japanese. She was a wonderful person, kind and sincere, but she also liked her beer and always had an American in tow.

  It was through Lois that I met a nice Scottish sailor. I went out with him for quite a while, it was a good friendship. For once, Mum approved. She knew how wild the Yanks were, so I suppose she thought I’d be safe with a Scotsman.

  Every weekend the Yanks had a wild brawl down on the seafront and the police were called in. It was almost a regular outing for them. It was difficult during the war, some of the men had been through terrible things, I think they needed to let off steam some way.

  I remember one Sunday, waiting at a bus stop for a bus to my girlfriend’s house, when a lady came along. She was catching the same bus as me, so we started to chat.

  ‘You’re very beautiful, dear,’ she said, ‘what nationality are you, Indian?’

  ‘No,’ I smiled, ‘I’m Aboriginal.’

  She looked at me in shock. ‘You can’t be,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said, putting her arm around me, ‘what on earth are you going to do?’

  I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me with such pity, I felt really embarrassed. I wondered what was wrong with being Aboriginal. I wondered what she expected me to do about it.

  I talked to Mum about it and she told me I must never tell anyone what I was. She made me really frightened. I think that was when I started wishing I was something different.

  It was harder for Mum than me because she was so broad featured she couldn’t pass for anything else. I started noticing that, when she went out, people stared at her, I hadn’t realised that before.

  The conversation with that lady at the bus stop really confused me. I suddenly felt like a criminal. I couldn’t understand
why I felt so terrible. Looking back now, I suppose she knew more about how Aboriginal people were treated than I did. She probably knew I had no future, that I’d never be accepted, never be allowed to achieve anything.

  I tried for a while after that to talk to Mum and get her to explain things to me, especially about the past and where she’d come from. It was hopeless, we’d been apart too long to get really close. I knew she loved me and I loved her, but, for all my childhood, she had been just a person I saw on holidays. I couldn’t confide my worries to her. She just kept saying, ‘Terrible things will happen to you if you tell people what you are.’ I felt, for her sake as well as my own, I’d better keep quiet. I was really scared of authority. I wasn’t sure what could happen to me.

  Molly Skinner sold her house, so we had to find somewhere else to live. We managed to rent another place near the Ocean Beach Hotel. It was a nice little weatherboard house.

  Mum and I began to disagree a lot more. I had bought myself a few things from my wages and she would give them away to her friends without even asking me. If they said they liked something, she’d say, ‘Oh, Glad doesn’t want that, she can buy another one, you take it.’ People would come and deliberately point out something of mine and she would give it to them straightaway, especially if they were white people. I used to think she was trying to impress them. She was trying to buy white friends. It used to really upset me. There were so many things that I didn’t understand, then.

  Another lady came to help cook at the Colourpatch and I became very good friends with one of her daughters. We went many places together and I often stayed overnight at her house. She had brothers and sisters, I really envied that.

  One of her sisters became engaged and I was invited to the engagement party, that was where I met Bill.

  It was strange, really, because, all my teenage years, I’d dreamt of this man who I would one day meet and marry, so it was quite a shock to see him at this party. The dreams I’d had about him were always mixed up and recurring. Sometimes, they’d turn into nightmares. My future marriage was to turn out like that, it was to be good and bad, only I didn’t know it then.

  As soon as I was introduced to Bill, I knew my carefree days were over. I wasn’t ready to settle down and get married, but I knew I didn’t have any choice, this was meant to be.

  Bill was different from other men I’d gone out with, he was older, more worldly. I knew he’d been a POW in Germany, but I didn’t realise then what a terrible time he’d had.

  None of my friends liked Bill and Mum disapproved of him too. ‘He drinks too much,’ she told me, ‘you don’t want to marry a drinker.’ My friends tried to warn me about him. They said he was wild, sometimes crazy, but I didn’t listen.

  The day after I’d met Bill, he said, ‘You’re going to marry me.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  I was going with someone else at the time, so I thought, well, I might be able to hold him off for a while, but it wasn’t to be. We went out for a year before we married. Mum never changed her mind about him. I told him I was Aboriginal, but he said he didn’t care. And I don’t think he did then, it was later that he changed.

  His parents disapproved of me, they didn’t want him marrying a coloured person. At the same time, they were glad to get him off their hands, because they hadn’t been able to control him. They were sick of him wrapping trucks around telephone poles.

  I managed to get Bill to cut down on his drinking. I hoped it was a change for the better that would last. Mum didn’t want to come to the wedding and neither did Bill’s family, so we went and got married in a registry office. I was twenty-one. I think Mum had hoped it would all blow over and I’d get interested in someone else. I never told her when I was going to get married. I just went and did it. We’d talked about it before and it had only led to arguments. She had always been very jealous of anyone who took my attention away from her. She wanted me to stay home for the rest of my life and look after her.

  ***

  After we were married, we lived with Mum. I was very happy. I continued to work at the florist shop. Mrs Sales sold out to a Mrs Richardson and she kept me on because I was good at my job. Richie, as we called her, was a real character, she would lie out the back on a small settee and drink wine all day. She left the running of the shop completely to me. At the end of the day, I’d wake her up and then I would catch the bus home.

  Things didn’t improve with Bill’s family. They were very disappointed that he had actually gone ahead and married me. Bill’s mother was very narrow-minded, she used to say things to Bill behind my back. I knew she would never accept me as an equal. I don’t know how much Bill’s father worried about me being coloured. He was always under the weather. Sometimes, he’d make a big fuss of me because I’d slip him a bit of money. I think he liked anybody who’d give him a few bob.

  I knew Bill had had a funny upbringing. I was a real innocent compared to him.

  Grandpa Milroy used to travel around putting in petrol bowsers for the Shell Oil Company, and Bill’s mother was always sending Bill off to the Goldfields to haul his father out of the pubs and bring him home. Bill’s father gambled away a fortune, and had Bill drinking beer from his early teenage years.

  When Bill was fourteen, he had run away from home and got a job up North as a stockman. He told everyone he was sixteen, he could pass for that because he was tall. He loved the life up there and was very upset when his father found him and made him return to Perth.

  I found it difficult mixing with Bill’s brothers and their friends. I’d been brought up strictly, whereas they lived in a brave new world. It was becoming a permissive society, even then.

  Bill was different to his brothers. He had strong ideas and a kind heart. He had religious beliefs. When he was younger, he had wanted to become a priest, his mother was a strict Catholic. Bill had what you’d call a more universal outlook on life. I think that was because he’d seen a lot that other people hadn’t. He never talked about his religious beliefs, but I knew they were there, deep inside him. Sometimes, when he talked about the war, I felt that there was a spiritual force that helped him get through. There were many times when he should have died, but didn’t. He was meant to come back.

  When I found out I was pregnant, I was really excited. Bill was overjoyed, expecting it to be a son, but it was Sally. I couldn’t believe that I finally had a family of my own. Mum was really pleased too. In a strange way, I think it made her feel more secure, she was a grandmother now.

  It wasn’t long after that that Bill applied for a tradesman’s flat down at Beaconsfield, where he was working as a plumber.

  After the war there was a housing shortage and a lot of these weatherboard clusters had been built, they were mainly tenanted by English people who migrated out here in the hope of a better life. We were pleased to be moving into our own place. The surroundings were very pretty, it had originally been a farm and everyone still called it Mulberry Farm. There was a huge mulberry tree opposite our flat and olive trees dotted all over the place.

  When we first moved in, we were always broke; it made a difference, having to pay rent. I had to give up work when I became pregnant. Also, people were always coming around, wanting to borrow money. I felt sorry for them and would give them what I had, but they never paid any of it back. Apparently, this was the norm, but I didn’t know. I had to cut down on my lending.

  There was plenty of action at Mulberry Farm, domestic fights all the time and some funny things going on. It always gave me a good laugh.

  Sally was very sick when she was small, we nearly lost her a couple of times. Sometimes during the night, I’d awake to see the figure of a nun standing next to her cot. It didn’t frighten me, I knew she was being watched over, the way I had been when I was a child. I knew that she would never be a strong person, but she wouldn’t die young.

  Bill began having nightmares again. He’d suffered from them ever since he’d co
me back from the war. He’d scream and scream at night. I used to feel so sorry for him. Before we married, I had thought that the idea of being a POW was something very heroic and romantic, now I thought differently.

  I used to try and get him to talk about his nightmares, it helped him a little, but he’d never go really deeply into what had happened to him. I think there were some things that were too degrading for him to share. I knew there had been one German commandant that had treated him really badly. Bill absolutely hated him, I think if he’d had the opportunity, he would have killed him. Bill would never tell me what had happened. A lot of his nightmares were about this chap. He would dream he couldn’t get away.

  One time, Bill’s mother came around, she said she wanted to ask Bill something. She worked quite a few nights at the trots and she told him that a tall man with an accent had come up to her and said, ‘Did you have a son who was a POW during the war in Germany?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘how did you know?’

  ‘It’s the eyes,’ he said, ‘you have the same eyes. I would recognise those eyes anywhere.’ Then, apparently, he disappeared into the crowd.

  I’ll never forget the look on Bill’s face when she asked him who the chap could be. He went as white as a sheet. He knew who it was, but he wouldn’t tell us, he just locked himself in his room and wouldn’t come out.

  There was a real mess after the war, I think a lot of Germans came out to Australia, passing themselves off as different nationalities. This chap was German. I think he was the man Bill hated, I’m sure of it.

  It was that episode that precipitated his drinking again. He’d been good since he’d married me, he’d settled down a lot, but now, all he was interested in was forgetting the past in a bottle. He hardly ate, he just drank. Mum had to bring me food from the restaurant, I never had any money. Sometimes, he’d disappear for days and I wouldn’t see him. I was worried sick, anything could have happened to him. I knew he had blackouts. I sometimes wondered if he even knew where he’d been all that time.