Ginger was now telling a story that Elizabeth had never heard before. Nick was scribbling away in a moleskin-bound notebook, with Holly recording the session.
‘Rupert loved this story and would be furious at me if I didn’t make sure it was included in the book,’ Ginger began. ‘It was when I attended the opening day of his controversial show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in January 1945. Can’t think what the show was called now. His paintings were sharing an exhibition room with other artists’, but it was Rupert attracting all the controversy and placard-waving outside the gallery.
‘It was all Kitty Collins’ fault, you know,’ Ginger went on with a rueful smile. ‘If she hadn’t been featured in several paintings running stark naked through Owlbone Woods, nobody would have bothered wasting newsprint covering his show. But because of the scandal I read about him in the paper, and decided I had to see it. And I recognised Kitty, you see, from when she briefly attended my school. Served me right for being fascinated by vice and obscenity! Can’t help thinking how different my life would have been if I’d missed the story in the local rag.’
‘Different as in better, or worse?’ Nick interrupted, his dark eyes fastened on Ginger, who looked confused, then annoyed that her train of thought had been interrupted.
‘Different as in different,’ she snapped.
Elizabeth and Nick exchanged a glance, their first real interaction since their introduction last night. Nick must have been at least fifty, Elizabeth thought, but he was still attractive and charismatic. She itched to photograph his face, with its high cheekbones and intense dark eyes. His dark hair curled to his shoulders. He’d make a wonderful portrait in his black leather jacket, perched on Ginger’s sofa with a hot-pink feather boa behind him. What on earth was Ginger doing with a boa up in the mountains?
‘I couldn’t understand what all the energetic placard-waving was about, to be honest,’ Ginger said, regaining her thread, ‘and I remember being irritated by it all. Surely, with a war going on, there were far more important things to be stirred up about? But I decided to go – I was hoping to see Kitty for old times’ sake, and to get a look at the paintings and see what all the fuss was about. More fool me – I wasted half a crown and my precious half-hour lunch break at Mark Foy’s Emporium to have a gander. Not to mention everything that came after . . .
‘I was terrified that I’d be late back to work at the glove counter. I couldn’t trust Jane in Hosiery and Lingerie not to dob me in to my supervisor, Mrs Stafford, if she noticed my counter was unattended, even for five minutes. She had plenty of time to stick her sharp nose into my business, with her counter slow due to the wartime restrictions and stocking materials being used to make parachutes. At the time, several of my friends were working in munitions factories, and a couple had joined the Land Army. Neither option appealed to me. I’d heard their complaints about the long hours in the factories, and seen their roughened hands and chipped nails, and I couldn’t picture myself in a pair of overalls in the middle of woop woop milking a cow or driving a tractor. I had toyed with the idea of becoming a tram conductor, because the trams were paying girls really well at the time, or of joining the Women’s Auxiliary, just for the smart uniform. I even imagined myself entertaining the troops overseas like beautiful Rita Hayworth or Marlene Dietrich, although my voice wouldn’t have entertained anyone, or becoming a hostess girl at a club like the Trocadero . . . Ma would have been crankier than a one-legged frog in a sock had she known about that particular aspiration. Ma hated the nightclubs and thought the jazz and swing music the Yanks had brought to Sydney sounded like cats being attacked with a chainsaw.
‘Before I actually got a job there, I’d imagined Mark Foy’s would be a glamorous place to work.’ Ginger’s voice had become dreamy and faraway, and Elizabeth, keen to hear about the exhibition and Rupert, had to bite her lip to hide her impatience. ‘I’d always loved browsing their catalogues when I visited the store with Ma, admiring the mirrored counters, stylish counter attendants, and of course the piano man on the ground floor. But the reality of the job was worlds away from the paradise Ma and I had sighed over. I hadn’t reckoned on old Bulldog Stafford and the sheer tedium of sales work. I spent my shifts cleaning the counter, listening to Herbert on his piano, or I’d make up stories about the customers and smile to myself at the little girls whose eyes lit up at all the grandeur Mark Foy’s provided for folk needing to escape the hardship of their lives. As I extolled to customers the virtues of a new white doeskin glove, I would dream I was fabulously wealthy, and that I never again had to see sour old Bulldog Stafford, or hold the sweaty hand of a smelly old matron with her elbow on my velvet cushion as I tried to work her fat fingers into a glove.
‘I’d simmer with envy when the posh ladies would enter Foy’s in their fashionable skunk furs and sparkling jewellery, wearing expensive perfume that smelled of the real Paris and not my Coty’s Paris. Bulldog and the other supervisors would run around after them, and I would study them closely, their walk, their lipstick shade, not my Coles Exciting No. 10, their aloof air as I wiped my counter for the millionth time that shift; and someday, somehow, I knew I was going to be one of those women everybody waited on, the women who bought boxes of handmade French lace lingerie and didn’t ask for nor baulk at the exorbitant price of the contents of those exquisitely wrapped boxes. But I knew how much those elegant boxes with their scanties cost – they would feed a family in my street for months.
‘This longed-for future didn’t seem an impossible goal. I had once been one of the little girls who gazed upon the women behind the counter of Foy’s, and now I was one of those smartly dressed women. So I was sure that one day I’d similarly transform into one of the women with expensive furs and real silk stockings, as opposed to someone who painted her stockings on. I wasn’t going to end up like Ma or one of my silly sisters, slaving for a husband and kids. I was a caterpillar, biding my time, knowing my eventual metamorphosis into a butterfly to be inevitable.’
Ginger stopped pacing and twirled slowly, raising her arms as if to demonstrate her transformation. Holly seemed entranced by the story, but glancing sideways, Elizabeth could see that Nick was frowning as he doodled in his notebook. She quickly looked down to try to read what he had written. Two names with a connecting arrow: Shalimar – Dolly.
Not seeming to notice Nick’s lack of interest, Ginger went on. ‘Due to Foy’s slow sales during the war I had ample time to daydream as I cleaned and tried to tempt passing trade with the gloves. My vision was so strong I could see my future self in my glass counter when I gazed upon it. These days they talk about the power of visualisation – well, I was doing it on my gloves counter in the forties. But that’s me, folks; I’ve always been ahead of my time.
‘Even though I didn’t like the job much, I couldn’t afford to lose it, with my dad away at the war. So I took a risk going to the art show; my head would be on the block if Bulldog discovered I was late back. Helen, my chum in Hats, promised to distract Jane if I hadn’t returned in time.
‘But even with my worries, I couldn’t fail to be cheered by my walk to the art gallery. The streets were busy at lunchtime. The women wore felt hats with feathers, square-shouldered frocks and lace-up shoes with heels. The American sailors were highly visible, their immaculate uniforms easily spotted among the Australian civilian men in single-breasted suits, waistcoats and pork-pie hats. I just loved seeing the Americans in their uniforms! They were so much smarter than the Australian chaps – even though it seemed disloyal to my fellow Snowy to even think it. Ma could sniff as much as she liked about them being “over-sexed, overpaid and over here”; I thought the Americans had given Sydney a much-needed boost of glamour and excitement amid all the blackouts, brownouts, air-raid sirens and shelters. Before I met Snowy, my friends and I had flocked to the Trocadero in the hope of meeting an American soldier. A doughboy date was a highly prized affair, and competition was fierce among the Sydney women to catch their attention. The Yanks had m
oney, chocolates, stockings, imported cigarettes; they weren’t restricted by the rationing we had to endure. They knew about curious-sounding food like Spam and peanut butter, flashed gleaming white teeth, and radiated glamour and the hope of a better life on foreign shores. Every girl I knew dreamed of marrying one.
‘As I got nearer to the art gallery my spirits were lifted further by the salty tang of the sea, and the glimpse of the shimmering harbour bustling with ferries. I loved Sydney Harbour with its dramatically contrasting sandstone cliffs and green-blue ocean, its promise of hope and adventure. Both were sorely lacking in my life on the gloves counter. A few of the sailors wolf-whistled, but I kept hurrying. Looking was free and I didn’t charge, but I was already taken, fellas!’
Ginger picked up her teacup and took a few sips. ‘You wouldn’t believe how men would stare at me in the street once upon a time,’ she said immodestly to Nick.
‘I’m sure they still do, Ginger,’ Nick offered.
Oh, Mr Sincerity, Elizabeth jeered silently.
‘Ginger still appears in mags celebrating her beauty.’ Holly beamed. ‘Even Playboy magazine are after her – aren’t they, Ginger?’
That made Nick look up from his scribbling. ‘Are you going to do it?’
‘On my seventieth birthday they proposed a four-page spread as the sexiest seventy-year-old on the planet,’ Ginger said airily. ‘I told them to call back when I was eighty and my book was published – I would need the publicity then. If there was one thing Rupert had taught me, it was to never give it away for free.’
‘Don’t get her started on Playboy,’ Holly said, apparently oblivious to the fact that she was the one who had brought it up. ‘Keep going with the story, Ginger, before I have to go and check on my workmen. Stop interrupting her, Nick!’
Amused, Elizabeth saw Nick give an admirably restrained nod and scribble Playboy in his notebook. He smelled of musk and a leathery citrus smell. A sensual odour, Elizabeth thought, one she wanted to keep smelling, even though she didn’t normally like perfumes on men.
Ginger resumed pacing, gesturing theatrically with her beautifully manicured hands, waving as she recalled the events of that long-ago day in 1945. ‘I’d been knocking around with a navy boy from Melbourne called Snowy, who was off the destroyer ship the Copperhead.’ She stopped as if considering whether to say something else before she continued. ‘I was crazy about Snowy’s blond good looks, blue eyes and smart uniform. I hoped that before the Copperhead sailed, I could take my fella for a picnic at Manly Beach or a day out at Chowder Bay or Luna Park. I was working myself up at nights, tossing and turning, wondering if he would ask for my hand before he sailed, worrying about sending him off to war with dashed hopes. Lots of people were getting hitched before the men went off to fight. Snowy was a ship’s cook, but culinary skills wouldn’t save him if they hit a mine. As I knew, he couldn’t swim to save himself if the ship went down. But he was keen on the idea of adventure and seeing the world, and so he had signed up.
‘In spite of all the publicity in the newspaper, I was surprised by the abnormally large crowd at the gallery when I got there. Some things never change over the years, and people’s fascination with a naked pretty woman is one of them! Unlike most who had braved the heat to cram like sweating sardines into the gallery, though, I knew the woman they’d flocked to be shocked by. Kitty had attended St Augustine’s Catholic School in Surry Hills for a year before vanishing – back to the mountains, people said – along with her twelve brothers and sisters. To escape the debt collectors, was Ma’s cynical consensus when I’d bewailed the loss of my friend. Ma believed Kitty gave herself airs and graces, wearing ribbon hairbands and pretty frocks stitched by her mother. But that was Ma for you. Life had soured her, and little wonder with Pa the way he was. If he wasn’t at the pub, he was at the races, and his only other sport was bashing Ma. When I saw the way that pig treated her – giving her constant babies, eight in all, his filthy tongue and the beatings – that’s when I vowed I’d never get tied to man nor babe. I, Ginger Jarvis, as my name was then, would never marry and be a slave to any man. I may not have been the brightest bulb in the universe, but I was attractive and had a good figure, and I was determined to make something of myself. I could never let myself end up like Ma. So I wasn’t surprised that Ma would resent Kitty. That glowing girl had hope. Ma had none.
‘For some reason, I was thinking of Ma as I elbowed my way through the crowds slathering over the images of a cheerful, naked, strangely innocent Kitty. I was getting quite a lump in my throat. By then Ma already looked like an old woman, when she wasn’t anywhere near forty. All the child-bearing, bashings, poverty and fretting had worn her out. All she had was her religion, but religion didn’t buy the food she needed to put a bloom in her cheeks! Religion didn’t keep us from bedbugs, or the low-lifes pestering us in the streets.
‘As I was fighting back tears and pushing through the throng of titillated sardines, most of whom were gathered in a gawking outraged mob around a series of six oil paintings called Naked Flowers. In the works, a naked Kitty and a dark-haired sultry-looking woman reclined on a silk-draped couch scattered with native flowers, a panther at their feet. As I turned to flee the mob’s comments – which seemed to veer between wanting to burn the works and artist and wanting to marry the models – I ran into Kitty in person. She was still as fresh and glamorous as ever in a white floral blouse and skirt, white hat, gloves and green peep-toe shoes. Her blonde hair brushed in gleaming Veronica Lake-like waves to her shoulders. Accompanying her was a snooty-looking blonde woman whose attire of camel-coloured trousers and black blouse seemed to be earning many disapproving glances. With them was a dark-haired woman I recognised as the voluptuous, sultry woman from the painting, in a tight red dress with a peplum blouse, the bodice accentuating her knock-out figure, who seemed amused at the sight of me in my work uniform and with a scarf tying up my hair. I’m sure Kitty recognised me. Her mouth opened slightly as if to say my name. Or at least that’s what I told myself afterwards – but before I had a chance to address her, Miss Snooty grabbed her arm, dragging her off, saying in a high-pitched English accent, “There he is! Come on, Kitty!”
‘Kitty glanced back at me as they disappeared through the crowd. A couple of men leered at the girls, no doubt recognising the “Flowers of the devil”, as the Sydney Daily had sensationally christened Partridge’s life models. Was I deluding myself to think that Kitty had recognised me, that she remembered her girlhood pal? Perhaps after all she had only taken me for an autograph hunter. Back at St Augustine’s I had befriended Kitty when the schoolyard bullies had teased her for her timid ways. And this was how Kitty repaid me! I was short on cash, already knew I would be late back to work, and now I had been snubbed.
‘I have a temper. It goes with the territory, you see.’ Ginger gestured to her brightly hennaed hair. ‘Pa had the red hair as well. I was shaking with anger as I made my way to the only bit of space I could find in the crowded gallery, a seat near the gents’ toilets with some tramp perched on the other end. “The paintings are bloody awful, anyway,” I said angrily, not realising that I’d spoken out loud until the tramp turned to me in surprise. “I beg your pardon?” he said.
‘Despite my rage at being cut dead by Kitty Collins, I couldn’t help noticing what a scruffy sort he was. His hair was longer than fashion dictated, he hadn’t shaved and his clothes – creased trousers and a worn suit jacket, patched at the elbows – looked as if he had slept in them. His hat was ancient and battered and could have done with a good steam. His eyes bore the jaded expression of a man much older than the late twenties or early thirties that I guessed he was.
‘ “I said his paintings are bloody awful,” I snapped. “No substance to any of them. A monkey could do better.”
‘ “Really? A monkey that can paint? I’d love to see that!” He stared at the paintings on the wall in silence. I watched a handsome young doughboy in navy uniform coming out of the toilet. The officer look
ed at me and I half smiled, for a second seeing myself reflected in his eyes – an attractive sixteen-year-old redhead in a drab navy pinstriped Mark Foy’s uniform, which nevertheless showed off my voluptuous figure. He winked at me – cheeky devil – and then, to my disappointment, a beautiful blonde pounced on him, dragging him off with a triumphant snarl in my direction.
‘ “Why are so many people here, then?” the scruffy gent asked, watching my eyes follow the Yank. “Why would so many be willing to part with a few bob over a painter who could be outdone by a monkey? Why don’t they simply catch the ferry to Taronga Zoo?”
‘I laughed bitterly, still smarting from the smug victory in the blonde’s eyes over her American catch. “It’s obvious why, isn’t it? If Partridge didn’t paint naked women, nobody would bother. And,” I continued viciously, on a roll, “they’re here for the Boyds and Tuckers! At least those painters have talent and vision and are prepared to make a statement about the times we live in. Rupert Partridge went to war – even if he was only in the military hospital in Yankstown,” I joked, referring to the large number of American air force men stationed at Bankstown, but the tramp didn’t laugh. He kept staring at me in an intent manner that made me uneasy, although unfortunately it didn’t still my tongue. “He drew the boys who did see action – and what’s his art got to say about that?” I tossed my hair back and smiled as I turned to the tramp to deliver my next sentence. “I reckon he’s just a dirty pervert!”
‘A shadow crossed the man’s face and I regretted my harsh words. It wasn’t the done thing to mention the war in case you opened a Pandora’s box that spat out dark memories that should be secured away forever.
‘ “What’s your name, Red?” he asked.
‘I hesitated, hoping a down-and-out wasn’t trying to pick me up, but thinking there was no harm in it, replied, “Ginger.”
Currawong Manor Page 5
