Part way down the back yard stood an old caravan and, farther away, a workshop with a roof and one wall – in the style of our church hall but smaller. Near it stood some tip truck and tractor carcasses and a number of half-demolished machines of unimaginable purpose. The caravan had no wheels.
Closer to the house were the two anaemic looking gum trees where Ma Reiff had parked the car and, to one side, a typical outside dunny. The trees competed for the bathroom drain’s water along with a threadbare patch of grass near the back door and an enormous Queensland-blue pumpkin vine. The pumpkin vine appeared to be winning.
One of the gum trees sported a well-used swing – a piece of old rope with an attached car tyre. Higher up in its branches was a small platform Zack had constructed as a private retreat.
Later he invited me to join him up there, only to find several dolls in residence. Apparently, during his absence, Jessica had succeeded in climbing the tree, thus staking a claim on the property. “Hey Jess, you little rat!” he yelled at the house. “What d’you think you’re doing bringin’ your dolls up here? This is my cubby!”
He made no move to evict her tenants, however, and I presumed from this that the wiry Jessica might also give a fair account of herself when pressed.
When no response was forthcoming Zack descended via the rope swing and disappeared into the house. There he found Jessica and their mother awaiting his arrival. Shortly afterwards he came out again and wandered over to where I was inspecting the old machinery.
“How did you go?” I asked.
“...Ah well,” he said philosophically. “Things change. I suppose she can have it. Come on, I’ll show you where we’ll be sleeping. Mum’s done up the old caravan special, ay.”
She had indeed. Its outside was beyond redemption but the inside had been cleaned out and painted. New curtains had been put across the windows and a couple of new mats graced the floor. The two beds were made up and our clothes had been unpacked and put away. It was all very cosy and comfortable.
Later in the afternoon Zack’s father arrived home, his tip truck creaking and groaning under an enormous load of rock and rubble – copper ore from the small mine where he worked. I couldn’t believe how dilapidated it was. Little puddles of black oil began forming beneath it as soon as he stopped, while at the front came a steady drip from the radiator.
The children heard the truck arrive. When their father stepped down from the cabin he was mobbed by all seven of them, the younger ones screaming with delight. They pulled him over to the grassy patch near the back door and dragged him to his knees so they could be given hugs, mostly two or three at a time.
When he stood up again Cecily remained stuck to his arm – hanging on with her arms and legs. Jacob and Rebecca had claimed a leg each as well, their father’s less than vigorous attempts to shake any of them loose having no effect whatever.
When Zack introduced us we shook hands, with Cecily clinging to his arm like a determined possum.
Jasper Reiff was a solidly built, sandy-haired, happy-go-lucky type of person, wearing a shirt with the sleeves ripped off and most of the buttons missing. And his arms had more muscles than the bloke in the old Don Athaldo ads. (You know: “…You too can have a body like mine”.)
This plus his sandy moustache and suntan made him look a bit like a pirate. His steel toe-capped boots and shorts were not part of any pirate’s outfit, however. Their tops gaped open and their mile long laces flapped about undone.
After he’d shaken off the various limpets we all went inside. Ma Reiff was busy dishing out the evening meal from a large black-iron pot. It was lamb stew and it must have been Jasper’s favourite, as the serving she loaded onto his plate would have twice fed a strike of hungry stevedores. And neither was my own much smaller.
Then, when I was about half way through this minor mountain, Jasper went back for a second helping – and one no smaller than the first.
“A workin’ man needs his tucker, Kev,” he explained on seeing my look of astonishment, “but y’ve got to show a bit of culture. Havin’ a second helping’s a compliment to the cook, but if you took that much the first time people’d think you were a pig.”
“You stop leading the boy astray, Jasper Reiff,” Ma scolded him. “The only culture you could show Kevin is the stuff growing in your socks.”
Following dinner Zack was asked to light the chip heater for the children’s bath session, so I went out to help him collect kindling from the woodheap. Once the fire was burning he stoked it really heavily, as he wanted to demonstrate a phenomenon common to chip heaters: an interrupted draught that would develop in its fire-box when overfed. The resultant “whoof whoof whoof whoofing” it produced sounded exactly like a steam locomotive struggling up a steep gradient with a heavily loaded string of carriages on behind, a jet of orange flame shooting from the heater’s chimney with every “whoof”.
Just as it reached the steepest part of the hill Zack’s mother appeared around the corner followed by a train of wide eyed children. “You must think I’m deaf, Zachariah Reiff!” she shouted in a voice that would have rattled the gods in the grandest opera house. “How many times have I told you not to stoke the blasted thing up like that!
“Now get away from it! You’ll blow us all to Kingdom Come one of these days!”
Zack didn’t seem very much concerned by her thunderous broadside, but at such close range it left me shaken and disorientated. “Gees Mum,” he protested (as I leant against the wall to recover my balance), “I was just showin’ Kev how it goes. Anyway, it can’t blow up; it’s full of water.”
“Spare me your schoolboy science,” she told him as she turned to go. “Just you and Kevin get away from the thing. You children can get away from it as well, before it does let go,” she added to her audience.
Being the honoured guest allowed me the privilege of having the first bath. It was a wonderful feeling, too, just lying back in the hot water and letting my muscles relax before reaching for the soap. But with so many to follow I knew I’d soon have to relinquish this luxury.
I’d just rinsed myself and was stepping from the tub when the door slammed open and the bathroom was invaded by the four youngest and noisiest Reiff children. They left a short trail of discarded clothing and jumped squealing and splashing into the water. Jessica was close behind them.
I’d made a grab for my shorts but she arrived before I’d even started to get them on. In desperation and embarrassment I hopped around trying to pull them up, somehow getting two wet legs stuck firmly in the one trous. Reaching for a towel was out of the question; they were on the other side of the bathroom.
Jessica was no less surprised than I. She gaped at my manly figure a moment in utter astonishment, then turned her attention to the riot in the bathtub.
I, meanwhile, continued bobbling about in the corner; a naked apparition, hobbled and hamstrung ... and pink-cheeked in every sense of the term.
“You’re supposed to wait until I’ve had my bath!” Jessica shouted into the spray and the din. She grabbed a flannel and the nearest small body then started washing its grubby face. It was Jacob.
Then Zack arrived from the workshop where he’d been talking to his father. “What the hell’s goin’ on, Jessica?!!” he yelled into the bedlam. “I was next!”
“Well you should have been here! You know what they’re like!” she yelled back.
I’d got my legs out of my shorts by this time, but only after falling over. Now I lay on the wet floor kicking around as I tried to wrestle them on again. Zack turned and headed out to refire the chip-heater for his own and Jessica’s bath. “You look bloody ridiculous Casey,” he muttered as he stalked past.
Eventually my efforts were rewarded and I stood up. The shorts, I discovered, were inside out.
“Kebin! Kebin! Look me! I a fiss!” squealed Cecily. She submerged in the tangle of limbs under the water. Jessica was wrestling with Jacob and attempting to wash him.
B
rian was trying to remain aloof from the affray, considering himself old enough to bathe alone. Cecily and Rebecca were harassing him. Rebecca wanted to play splash and Cecily wanted to be a ‘fiss’. Trevor was trying for the World Breath-holding Record.
Jessica by this time was just as wet as her charges and the bathroom was completely awash. I rescued my things and paddled to the door, then once safely on the veranda finished drying myself – deferring for the moment the problem of the wet, inside-out shorts.
About then a barefooted Ma Reiff arrived. She grabbed the first clean squirming kid, straight-jacketed it into a towel and removed it to the pyjamas-applying department.
All this was a revelation to me. I was an only child. Growing up with so many brothers and sisters seemed like living in a cage full of monkeys. Yet I have to say, that despite the apparent anarchy and turmoil, I detected through it all a wonderful sense of belonging, a feeling so natural it was as much taken for granted as breathing the air.
Kevin Cassidy The Cassidy Chronicles Page 24
