Autobiography of My Mother

by Meg Stewart

  ‘You might see her, B-B-B-Barney,’ Paddy stuttered, ‘b-bb-but I never will.’

  When the priest said Mass, Barney would get up and join him at the altar so they said Mass together. Barney’s antics became too much for Yass and he was sent down to a hospital in Sydney where he eventually recovered.

  However, although he was quite well again, Barney didn’t wish to leave the hospital. He stayed on and spent the rest of his life caring for patients at the asylum.

  Religion entered very much into life at The House. The rosary was said every evening and grace before and after meals. The nuns were always in and out of the house because the convent was so near. Grandma went to Mass every morning at six, winter and summer, until old age prevented her.

  Sundays meant Mass in the morning and Benediction in the evening. Like the convent, the church was only a short distance from The House. Everyone dressed up for Mass. Going to church was the social event of the week, not just for the Catholics, either. Yass was full of people setting out for church on Sunday mornings.

  We filled a whole pew beside Grandma, majestic in her best Sunday black dress embroidered with jet beads.

  The first thing I remember about Mass was the tinkling of the bell at the consecration.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ I announced.

  They also handed round a silver plate filled with coins. I had to part with my copper penny and grabbed up a handful of silver coins in return.

  Sunday dinner was the meal of the week at Grandma’s, roast fowl and boiling bacon followed by trifle. After a meal like that, particularly in the summer heat, there wasn’t much to do except sleep. The uncles and aunts, lulled by the drone of blowflies buzzing against the windows, dozed in the deep drawing room chairs or retired to their bedrooms. In winter they nodded off in front of the drawing room fire.

  After helping Annie with the dishes, if I wasn’t stealing biscuits with Pauline I would pore over the pictures in one of the big books kept on the circular drawing room table. A compendium of art masterpieces of the world called Famous Paintings was the best. It had a red cover with an artist’s palette in gold embossed on the front, beautiful coloured reproductions and had been given to Grandma by Dad’s brother Frank in 1912 (many, many years later I managed to inherit it myself). I never tired of looking at Millet’s The Angelus, which showed two farmers praying in a field; Watts’ Hope, a portrait of a blind girl seated on a sphere, straining to hear the last notes from a broken lyre; or the rounded nude figures in Ruben’s The Judgement of Paris, as well as many others.

  Benediction was at seven. I liked Benediction, especially the smell of the incense and the music.

  The family rosary was recited every night after tea. Grandma wouldn’t let anyone out of the house until it had been said. When my father came out of the army and was living at The House, he was forever trying to escape up to the Soldiers’ Club without saying the rosary.

  ‘King,’ Grandma would say, ‘We’re going to say the rosary now.’

  Everyone had to join in; Annie was called from the kitchen. They knelt down in the drawing room and buried their heads in the chairs. When I was little I disgraced myself by climbing onto the hump of Grandma’s back while the rosary was in progress.

  Grandma never mentioned Grandfather Coen. Perhaps it was such a shock to her that he had died so young, but she never alluded to him in any way except at rosary.

  Grandma said an extra prayer before and after the rosary itself. In these prayers she referred to someone as ‘your servant Michael’; this was my grandfather. I had a vision of God up in heaven being waited on by Michael Coen, who had the job of servant.

  The Mercy nuns at Yass and the priests all fussed over Grandma because of her daughters being in the convent. She also had two sisters who were nuns. Priests often visited The House for a meal, or dropped in for a game of cards after tea. The Sacred Heart being a closed order, Trix and Evangelista were not allowed out, but Ina and Mollie in the Convent of Mercy used to come back to Yass every school holidays and stay with the nuns in the Yass convent. Most of their days were spent with us at The House, which added to the permeating religious atmosphere.

  The girls enjoyed teaching in convent schools; Grandma herself had been a teacher. By entering the convent, Grandma’s daughters were able to lead full and relatively independent lives. The alternative of spinsterhood in a country town might not have been nearly so interesting.

  Ina became head of an orphanage at Goulburn, Trix and Evangelista became Reverend Mothers in the Sacred Heart order. As for Mollie, music was the only thing that mattered to her and as long she had music, Mollie was happy.

  I doubt if they had much time to question their vocations, though Trix did slip up once when my mother was visiting her.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful, Bessie,’ Trix whispered, ‘if it was all a have?’ Then she blessed herself and scuttled into the chapel.

  I was so impressed by this religiousness that I decided I was going to be a saint. I asked Annie to wake me every morning in time for six o’clock Mass. When she did I usually abused her, told her she was cruel for waking me and went back to sleep. In summer I managed to make Mass about once a month but in winter it was pitch dark at six o’clock and I gave up being a saint.

  The religious atmosphere of The House, once accepted, seemed quite natural. It was just the way things were.

  A lame Aboriginal named Benji used to walk to Mass from the blacks’ camp on the other side of town. He walked five miles in the cold and dark every day in winter. He never dared to come up the front of the church but knelt at the very back, only limping up to the altar to receive Holy Communion and then retreating to the farthest back pew again afterwards.

  The church held a mission with a stall that sold holy cards, rosary beads and plaster statues. Mrs Mitchell, a friend of Grandma’s who was staying at The House, gave me a 10s note and told me to buy her some rosary beads that cost between 6s and 8s. I asked at the stall if they had any rosary beads for 3d. They had some cheap ones for children; obviously not the beads Mrs Mitchell had in mind. I bought them and pocketed the change, which she had said I could keep. Annie laughed and laughed when I told her the story. She didn’t know whether to make me take them back and buy Mrs Mitchell some proper beads.

  No, I insisted. Mrs Mitchell hadn’t said anything. She seemed to like her new beads. I think she was too stunned to complain.

  Another time the Red Cross was raising funds and a woman came in from the country with a beautifully dressed rag doll to be raffled. I was supposed to do the raffling. I got on well with the big staff at Coen’s, so I was asked to take the tickets around the store and sell them. The doll had a pretty face and soft, curly brown hair. Somehow, I thought, I must win the raffle. I had to have this doll.

  The tickets were 3d each. I dutifully gave out the little bits of numbered paper and asked everyone to write names and addresses on the other halves. I don’t remember anything more.

  I was asked for the tickets, I didn’t have them. I was asked for the money, I didn’t have it either. I was asked for the doll, I vanished with the doll.

  I crept back into the drawing room as Grandma was saying, ‘I’ll write you a cheque,’ and reaching into her pocket. Grandma always had a very capacious pocket in her voluminous black outfits. She drew out a fountain pen and cheque book. The cheque was for tickets and doll. The doll was mine.

  Sex was never discussed but, despite the secrecy at Grandma’s, I found out the facts of life quite young. After school, a girl whose parents owned an hotel sat a group of us in a buggy out the back of the hotel and proceeded to tell us ‘what grown-ups do’. I was astonished. Could this be going on behind the bedroom doors at The House? It didn’t seem possible. The answer, I decided, was clear. Catholics didn’t do it, only Protestants.

  From then on, I rather despised adults for their secret life and being hypocritical enough to hide such things from children.

  Scornfully I told Pauline what grown-up
s did. Pauline told her father, Uncle Luke, who told Dad and Dad told Mum. It took Mum forty years to mention the episode to me. I tried to get out of Mum what the others had told her I said, but Mum’s memory only produced a garbled version that made no sense.

  A little red-haired boy at the Yass school was always offering to show us girls something special, on condition we showed him something in return. None of the girls ever accepted, but he was perpetually eager to oblige.

  Annie, who had come straight from a Catholic convent into Grandma’s employ at The House, was in total ignorance of the facts of life for some time. Her discovery of sex also brought a degree of disillusionment.

  Annie loved the Royal family. She had coloured photos and calendar portraits cut from women’s magazines stuck up around the kitchen.

  I was staying at Yass for the holidays when I was about sixteen. Yet another mission was on at church. Annie and I were in the kitchen after Mass, joking about the severity of the sermon.

  ‘The priest shouldn’t have so much to say,’ Annie grumbled. ‘After all, he came into the world just like everyone. His parents did it, same as everybody else’s.’ She laughed.

  ‘Everybody does it, don’t they?’ she quizzed me, suddenly serious.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered her, ‘everybody.’ By this time I was fully aware of the sad truth that Catholics were as much into sex as the rest of the world. Annie laughed again.

  ‘Even the King and Queen,’ she went on. Annie glanced up at the picture on the kitchen wall and sighed sadly.

  ‘Mind you, I never thought the same of them,’ she added.

  There was no swearing or loose talk at The House, but cards were played. Card playing was a real ritual. At about eight o’clock every night after the rosary, the game began. Grandma and the aunts played solo, poker, five hundred and bridge; much later contract bridge came in. Annie and her friends played euchre and gin rummy and moved on to poker but not bridge.

  Annie used to become very wrought up when she played cards. She played for almost nothing, but couldn’t bear the thought of losing even her sixpenny stakes.

  I lived with Grandma for nearly a year, which was why I became so familiar with The House and its inhabitants, and so fond of them. Grandma wanted to keep me altogether, but eventually, about 1919, Mum sent for me. I always loved the country and hated the city and I continued to come back to Yass for my holidays.

  Every school holidays Mum would take me into Central and put me in the ladies’ compartment of the train to Yass. Every train had a compartment for women only. Mum would tell the guard and anyone else in the carriage to look after me, and off I set with a packed lunch to eat on the way.

  Annie used to make the most marvellous lunch boxes for me to take back on the train: little sandwiches, cut up into quarters and tiny iced cakes. Annie’s packed lunches were always a consolation, I felt, for coming back to the city.

  Kath, the only one of Grandma’s daughters who didn’t become a nun, would have liked to enter the convent, but the others said it was her duty to stay home and look after her mother. Despite her hankering for the religious life, Kath enjoyed not being in the convent, too. She loved playing cards, placing the odd bet on the horses and motoring.

  One Christmas holiday when I was about thirteen and was getting ready to go back to school, Kath asked me, ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered eagerly.

  ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘it’s a great secret and you mustn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘No.’ I was overcome with curiosity. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Mama is going to buy me a motor car. When you come back for your next holidays, I’ll be able to take you for picnics in the bush in it.’

  ‘A car!’ I couldn’t believe it. A car was really something.

  I didn’t breathe a word to anyone all term. Filled with anticipation, I arrived for my next holiday at Yass. There was the car: an early, open Dodge with side flaps that had to be fastened down when the roof came off.

  Sitting up very straight behind the wheel in kid driving gloves, her hat securely fastened with a hat pin, Kath motored us about the countryside. We also visited various properties round Yass and went for picnics.

  Picnics lasted all day. We started off very early in the morning, Kath, me, the aunts, Grandma and any stray cousins or odd uncles who were staying at The House.

  There were always fights between Lizzie and Linda as to who was to sit in the front seat with Kath. Usually Lizzie beat Linda by going out an hour early and settling herself down in the front seat. Once she was installed, nothing could move her. Kathleen would get quite annoyed.

  ‘Next time, auntie,’ she would say, ‘you must let Linda sit in the front.’ But it was impossible to win with Lizzie. Next time, she would still be in position before anyone else, ignoring all pleas to change places.

  At the picnic site, a white tablecloth would be spread out on the ground, then the food was produced: cold chicken, mixed sandwiches, cakes. The people at The House were good providers; or rather, Annie provided well for them.

  We often went to Mount Bowning. It was the highest spot in the area, rising abruptly out of the plains; you could see for miles from the top. It was eight miles out of Yass, a shortish trip in the car, but much, much longer in the phaeton or the buggy. It used to be our favourite picnic spot, until one expedition was marred by an unfortunate incident.

  Uncle Luke was with us this time, but as lunch was being laid out, he disappeared. He had been seized by some trouble with his bowels and forced to commune at length with nature. But, being well bred, he didn’t want to admit to his indisposition in the company of ladies, nor to have the results discovered in any after-lunch wanderings.

  ‘Don’t go up behind the rocks,’ he pronounced solemnly upon his return.

  ‘Why not, Uncle Luke?’ we asked innocently.

  ‘Why not?’ Uncle Luke looked disconcerted for a moment, then hit upon a handy subterfuge. ‘There’s a dead Chinaman up there, that’s why not,’ he said.

  We were flabbergasted; a dead Chinaman! The picnic was hastily packed up. No one seemed to spare a thought for the unfortunate corpse. I suppose all the adults knew the truth of the matter. But anyway, we never felt the same about picnics at Mount Bowning after that.

  Driving around the countryside was especially pretty in October and November with the lilac out. Mrs Magennis had over a hundred lilac bushes growing on her property, the colours ranging from palest mauve to dark, smoky amethyst. Peonies of every colour and type also flourished, and big opium poppies grew wild in some gardens.

  Kathleen’s best friend at school was Isabel McDonagh; she and Kathleen stayed close after they left school. Isabel often used to come and stay with Kathleen at Yass. She was beautiful and charming with a great sense of humour, and her career as an actress was about to begin under the stage name of Marie Lorraine. Although she was quite grown up, I loved being with Isabel. She enjoyed fun and games so much that she was like a child herself.

  Isabel was the oldest of seven children, five girls and two boys. The three oldest girls were always mad about the movies and were already planning to make their own feature film in which Isabel would star. Paulette, the second oldest, would write and direct, while Phyllis, the third, was to be art director. Later on Kath lent Isabel a lovely sequinned evening dress she bought in Paris to wear in one of their films.

  But at this time in Yass, World War I had just finished and an air force hero was passing through town. He fell very much in love with Isabel. With her vivacious teasing manner, Isabel didn’t take him too seriously, but the air force hero was invited up to The House for tea and to play cards afterwards with her and Kathleen.

  Before he arrived, Isabel took me down to the laundry at the back of the house. She showed me how to cut up a cake of Sunlight soap into little squares and together we rolled the little cubes of soap in flour to look like icing sugar. Kathleen was renowned for her home-made sweets and at ca
rds that night a dish of Kathleen’s home-made marshmallows appeared – Isabel’s and my efforts from the afternoon.

  The air force hero was invited to try one of Kathleen’s special sweets and accepted eagerly. His smile of anticipation turned to horror as he bit into the soap. The air force hero jumped back from the table to spit out a mouthful of suds. He did not appreciate our joke, and that was the end of that romance.

  The Irish landowner families around Yass were also fond of practical jokes. A large family of boys particularly loved them. Anyone who sat down to dinner at that property was likely to have a packet of firecrackers explode under the chair. The English jackeroos who regularly turned up to work there were frequently the butts of their humour. The boys filled the bed of one young Englishman with yabbies and when he leaped out of bed yelling, they told him they were only Australian fleas and that he shouldn’t be so soft.

  John, the second eldest of these Irish boys, was in love with Kathleen. Kathleen had great personality, but she was very religious and John was far too terrified to approach her. He was said to have offered a reward of £5 to anyone who would kiss Kath Coen, probably thinking that, if someone else could manage to kiss her, it might make things easier for him. But no one did, and his love remained unrequited.

  John was terribly nervous about almost everything. He stuttered badly too, but he was dying for an adventure of some sort. Their father made the boys work for almost nothing; he never paid them a proper wage, though occasionally he handed out some pocket money. John saved his up until he had enough to take a trip to Goulburn. On a Saturday afternoon, he set out on his adventure. He got himself into the train at Binalong and sat up in the carriage, waiting for life to begin.

  It began a lot sooner than he had bargained for. At Yass, the next stop, about twenty miles from Binalong, his father stormed into the carriage and proceeded to publicly berate his son for spending his money in such a manner.

  John’s nerves were so affected by this attack that even as an old man, whenever he came down to Sydney (he never owned a car), he had to hide in the lavatory until the train passed well out of Yass.