Autobiography of My Mother

by Meg Stewart

  The old father died eventually. The sons, including John, were left various properties. John had not only failed to win Kathleen but stayed a bachelor all his days. He was, however, determined to build himself a beautiful house with his inheritance. He came up to Anthony Hordern’s in Sydney to buy the furniture for his new residence. He was most impressed by a splendid long dining table and searched Hordern’s until he found a handsome set of chairs, ordering twelve to go with the table.

  John gave a grand dinner party to celebrate the completion of his new home. To his guests’ amusement and his own embarrassment, the guests discovered he had purchased twelve commode chairs to go with his splendid dining table, unaware of their true use. Upon reflection John decided they were eminently practical. He refused to part with them and the commode chairs had pride of place in his new home.

  Grandma knew all the Irish sheep station people from Yass to Binalong, as far out as Wee Jasper.

  They came into town on Saturday mornings, and left the children with Grandma while they did their shopping – the children often waited at The House on the black horsehair sofa until late afternoon. When Grandfather Coen started the store, he served afternoon tea on Saturdays for all his customers in the courtyard of The House, with tea for the women and free rum for the men. No wonder his business did so well.

  After he died, Saturday afternoon entertaining didn’t continue on such a grand scale, but the Irish Catholics still arrived at Grandma’s for afternoon tea. Annie made cakes and sandwiches and while the men went about their business the women took tea with Grandma, Kath and the aunts in the drawing room.

  About five o’clock, the gentlemen, often typically Irish-looking and gingery, just like the Coens, would arrive. In those days, men on the land lived for their sheep and could hardly bear to be away from them. They would be persuaded to have a cup of tea before they headed for home, their big, moustached faces looming over the delicate china cups. Then they would round up the women and children and depart.

  On Saturday night, the town was very much alive. The shops stayed open and Cooma Street was full of people. The flow of people stretched almost as far as the bridge over the Yass River and right out on the other side of town. The Salvation Army band played on a street corner, usually the one by the Hotel Royal.

  I was puzzled by two women who were always part of Saturday night. They were tall and thin with white faces, bright red cheeks and lips. Although everybody wore some powder and rouge, their faces had a hectic look and their clothes, even to me, were curiously theatrical.

  Annie told me they were ‘ladies of the town’, the town whores, a mother and daughter who lived together in a house on the hill.

  Every time I came to Yass for the holidays, before I went back to Sydney, Grandma let me choose a piece of dress material from the shop for a frock. It was always exciting. I remember one Christmas seeing a piece of blue silk with rosebuds embossed on it. I coveted this particular piece of material all holidays. When the time came to choose some material, I knew already what my selection was, though I was nervous about asking for it.

  ‘Well,’ Grandma said, ‘you have chosen the best piece of silk in the shop, but I suppose I must give it to you.’

  So she did. I took the couple of yards home in great delight and Mum made me a frock.

  I always enjoyed my stays at The House. I liked the continuity of life there; everything seemed to stay in place, to go on forever. It nearly did, too, because everybody lived to a very old age.

  Linda died first in 1938. She had been a teacher at a bush school near Jerilderie in the Kelly country and when she was an old lady, just before she died, I tried to get out of her if she had ever known Ned Kelly. A dreamy look came over her face and she went into a sort of trance and talked about a big man on a big black horse. She almost had me believing she knew Ned Kelly.

  Grandma died in her bed at The House in 1942. During the year before she died, Annie slept on the long sofa in the hall outside Grandma’s bedroom in case she needed tending in the night. Lizzie died eighteen months after Grandma in 1944.

  The shop was sold in 1947 to Meaghers of Temora, a country firm with stores in country towns including Temora and Cootamundra. It was later resold to Fosseys, who pulled down the old store and built a new shop.

  When the others died, Kath bought herself a bungalow in Meehan Street, next door but one to the Catholic church. She settled in with an assortment of furniture and treasures from The House, and what wouldn’t fit she stored in her garage. Annie went to live with Kath. They became totally dependent on each other as the years went by. Mollie and Ina, ‘the girls’, still came back to Yass every year for Christmas with Kath. Ina died in 1968.

  In 1971, when she was eighty, Annie died. Kath just faded away after that, and died about three years later. Mollie lived on, busily composing music at a home for retired nuns at Young. She died in 1983 aged ninety-three, the last of the women from The House.

  FOUR

  A TENDENCY TOWARDS THE GROTESQUE

  I lasted two days at the first school I went to in the city. When I came up to Sydney, Dad was still in the army, and Mum had installed herself, Jack, and now me, in a boarding house at Coogee called Villa Taormina. I was sent off to a big convent on the hill at Randwick.

  During a game of chasings on the second day, I jumped out of a window. Coming from a country school where I was adored and pretty much allowed to do what I liked, I thought nothing of jumping through the window. But at this new city school, one jump and the sky fell in on me. I was seized by a strange nun, taken to the front entrance, told to ring Reverend Mother’s bell. When she appeared I was to tell her what I had done. To ring Reverend Mother’s bell, I had to pull a rope cord three times. The nun vanished and I was left alone in the hall with my conscience. I was paralysed with apprehension. There was no way I could bring myself to pull Reverend Mother’s bell.

  I stayed in the hall for what seemed like hours, though probably it was only twenty minutes. Another nun came by and asked me what I was doing there. I blurted out my tale of wrongdoing. ‘I’ll ring Reverend Mother’s bell for you,’ she announced briskly, which she promptly did, then disappeared, leaving me to my fate.

  How long it took Reverend Mother to arrive I’ll never know. I was out the door in a flash, running as fast as I could down the long drive. I ran all the way down the hill, down Coogee Bay Road, down another street. I didn’t stop running until I was safely back with my mother at the Villa Taormina.

  I told my mother what had happened and said I was never going back to school.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she answered, and I didn’t go back to the convent on the hill.

  We moved out of the Villa Taormina into a flat at Coogee, high on the cliffs, overlooking Thompson’s Bay. My mother was busy organising men to shift our belongings from the boarding house and sent Jack and me ahead with strict instructions on how to find the new flat.

  Jack’s head was always in the clouds, or rather he had grand dreams. We walked up the hill as instructed, but instead of turning right at the top, we turned to the left. There, perched on the headland, was a magnificent mansion with sweeping gardens and a flight of steps leading up to a huge front door.

  Jack was impressed. This was our new home, he insisted. Bravely we went into the grounds, up the flight of steps to the front door and Jack pulled at the knocker. Nobody came, he pulled again. This time, after a pause, a maid in uniform answered the door. Jack explained that we had come to live there. The maid looked first confused then alarmed. She fetched a higher authority to deal with us. Jack again explained that we had come to live.

  In fact, it was not our new home, we found out. The mansion belonged to the Wirth family of Wirth’s Circus and they had a private zoo in the grounds. This was a double blow to Jack. He was bitterly disappointed, not only missing out on a mansion but a circus as well.

  Our new abode was much less grand. I can clearly remember a sudden summer southerly storm battering ou
r tiny house on the clifftops. Big waves came right up the cliffs and a piece of cliff broke away under the sea’s onslaught. Down on the beach, the surf surged in as far as the Coogee Bay hotel and the tramlines were covered with sand.

  I went to school at Clovelly. I had to make an enormous journey up and over a sandhill each day. I stayed at that school until we moved to Neutral Bay, where we lived in a boarding house near the water. The garden ran down to the harbour to a little. sandy beach with translucent silver and rose-coloured shells along the tide mark.

  Where the sand ended and the soil began I discovered a quantity of white clay. When the water was squeezed out of the clay, it could be moulded in the hands like dough. I made little baskets, cups and saucers, but chairs and tables were my speciality. I left them out in the sun until they were baked hard and furnished a doll’s house with them.

  Ferries were as enchanting then as they are now. ‘Fairy boats’ we used to call them. On hot summer nights we would board a ferry and go backwards and forwards across the harbour. The lights on the water at night, the excitement of being out late, meant that ‘fairy boats’ were really special.

  A large gangling youth known as Beetles lived at the boarding house. He was about sixteen; they called him Beetles because he collected beetles. I was fascinated by his collection. Neatly impaled on pins in a white cardboard box were Christmas beetles of shining green and gold, beetles with elegantly long feelers. He had a marvellous collection: small beetles, large beetles, some sombre, others brilliantly coloured, butterflies that flashed like jewels. My favourite was a vivid, turquoise blue beetle with black spots.

  Beetles commissioned me to bring him any beetles I found in the garden. I was so impressed by his collection that I started a small one on the side myself.

  Then we moved to a large old house in Botany Street, Randwick. The house, called Clarendon, had been converted into airy flats with good marble fireplaces and the garden was easily big enough to play in. Opposite the house was a Moreton Bay fig tree, a few hundred yards down the street were sandhills and a paddock filled with boronia and other wildflowers.

  I was nine, and Mum told me I was to go to a boarding school called Kincoppal, run by French nuns.

  At school in Yass, Sister Loreto had insisted we be friends with the half dozen or so Aboriginal children who attended, but it was hard. They were shy and stood in a little group by themselves. I managed, at last, to make friends with one, a girl, Alice Bolger.

  Alice and I were inseparable and I used to sneak biscuits and sweets from the store for her. When I left Yass, I was sad to say goodbye to her.

  My first day at Kincoppal, it was raining. Mum and I caught the tram from Randwick to Taylor Square. We had intended to walk all the way to Kincoppal in Elizabeth Bay, but the rain grew heavier. It seemed much further than we thought and Mum worried I would be late on my first day.

  Getting wetter and wetter, we stood at the top of William Street, wondering what to do. Another woman with a small girl was standing nearby.

  ‘Are you going to Kincoppal?’ she asked my mother.

  ‘Yes,’ my mother answered.

  ‘There’s a cab coming,’ (a horse-drawn cab it was in those days) ‘let’s share it,’ the other woman suggested. She added, ‘My name is Mrs Bolger and this is my daughter Alice.’

  Another Alice Bolger! I couldn’t believe it. I felt immediately cheered. Perhaps going to this new school in the city wouldn’t be so bad after all. The four of us got into the cab, Alice and I sitting on our mother’s knees, and arrived at Kincoppal together.

  Kincoppal was altogether different to any other school I had been to. It was terribly strict, but from the moment I stepped out of the cab on that rainy morning I loved it.

  The school was very small, only about thirty pupils including us boarders. My Aunt Kathleen from Yass had been a foundation pupil and Trix, my aunt who had entered the Sacred Heart order, was teaching there. Trix was my godmother. It was Trix who had persuaded my mother to send me to Kincoppal.

  The nuns wore black habits with a white frill round the face like a pie frill. With a few exceptions like Trix and gentle, charming, big-boned Mother Percy-Dove, a Cambridge graduate who taught us English, all the nuns were French. Reverend Mother and the Mistress-General were the highest-ranking, two most-to-be-feared nuns. A summons to see Reverend Mother meant serious trouble. Every time you passed either of these nuns you had to curtsy, a slow graceful curtsy, down to the count of four, and another four beats coming up.

  While they were so strict at Kincoppal, they also gave us wonderful treats. Reverend Mother’s feast day was always special. The first one took place about six weeks after I arrived. I was woken at six o’clock by three girls in fancy costumes playing musical instruments. One girl who played a violin wore a man’s bell topper and swallow-tailed jacket. The second girl with a beribboned tambourine was dressed like a gypsy with a scarf tied around her head. A third had a feather boa twined about her and played a little flute. I was enchanted.

  We presented Reverend Mother with what was called a ‘spiritual bouquet’. Instead of flowers, it was made up of all the prayers and rosaries being offered up for Reverend Mother on her feast day. The front page of the long list was decorated by Mother Supplisson. Mother Supplisson was a tiny, rosy-cheeked French nun who taught us French and liked drawing dwarves. The spiritual bouquet was adorned with quaint little bearded men in high hats busy about their fairy affairs, scurrying around with pot plants, climbing up ladders onto window sills. There was nothing religious about them, not the slightest trace of a halo or flutter of angel’s wings.

  During the day, we had a picnic down on the rocks by the harbour. At night after tea I was introduced to the terrifying game of loup. One girl was chosen as loup, French for ‘wolf’. She ran and hid in the garden. The rest, about twenty of us boarders, huddled together from the wolf. At our head, a girl was the shepherd guarding the flock. Another girl with her arms spread out was the dog protecting the rear.

  ‘Loup, loup, where are you?’ the shepherd would call out. The wolf answered with a long-drawn-out, blood-curdling howl and we shivered with fright. The shepherd had to try and catch the wolf and the wolf tried to capture one of the sheep. If the wolf snatched a sheep, that sheep became the next wolf. Creeping silently round the totally dark garden was deliciously spine-tingling; added to that was the unbearable suspense of waiting for the ear-piercing screams of the sheep when the wolf did pounce. Loup was the most exciting game I ever played. Apparently the people who lived next door in the grand old mansion Toftmonks were so alarmed by the sounds of screaming girls in the night they sent someone in to find out what was happening at the convent.

  Kincoppal was tucked away at the end of Elizabeth Bay Road in a leafy cul-de-sac behind Kings Cross and overlooking the harbour. Kincoppal House had belonged to the Hughes family, whose two daughters Maria and Susan had become Sacred Heart nuns. When Dr John Hughes died, he left Kincoppal House and the grounds, almost a whole hillside, to the Sacré Coeur order.

  ‘Kincoppal’ was written across the wrought-iron gate between the big stone pillars at the entrance to the school. Kincoppal is an Irish word meaning ‘horse’s head’; it referred to a craggy sandstone formation that jutted out of the harbour at the bottom of the grounds.

  A short, circular drive dotted with pink and white camellias swung up to Kincoppal House and round so it was possible to drive in and out without turning. In front of the house were garden beds of thickly clustered rich blue, gold and purple pansies tended by a whiskered old gardener named Mortice. The nuns lived in Kincoppal House, the school itself was in another building further down the hill.

  Kincoppal House was two-storeyed and made of sandstone. It had a heavy brass-knockered front door set back in a tiled verandah that ran the width of the house. The front door opened into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway. The chequered pattern on the verandah tiles outside changed to a star-shaped design in the hall. On both sides of the hall were
two rooms, known as the parlours, which had wooden-shuttered French doors leading onto the verandah. A cedar staircase led up to the second storey, where the nuns slept. The upstairs windows were also wooden-shuttered.

  Pupils were never allowed in the nuns’ house but one Christmas holidays when the Kincoppal nuns went over to the Rose Bay convent for a retreat, Trix asked Mum to come and look after the house for the nuns. So for three weeks, Mum, Mollie, the boys and I actually lived in Kincoppal House.

  At the end of our stay, Mollie and King asked a few friends over and put some dance records on the gramophone. Someone complained to the nuns about it afterwards, saying it wasn’t proper to hear dance music coming out of the convent. Trix was angry and scolded my mother for allowing the party. Mum, in turn, was indignant at Trix’s disapproval. Trix shouldn’t take it so seriously, Mum said. The children were only having fun.

  The school building was tall and narrow with about six storeys. We stepped straight from the nuns’ house into the school chapel. Every morning we went to Mass in the chapel at half past seven.

  After Mass we had breakfast in the refectory under the chapel built on another level of the hill as it dropped down to the water. Because so many of the nuns were French, if we spoke at all we had to speak in French at breakfast. Conversation as such was not allowed at any meal. One girl sat behind a rostrum at the end of the refectory during the evening meal and read aloud. The school had an inexhaustible supply of novels to do with the torturing of English priests at the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the rack being their favourite torture instrument. They made grim reading and grim listening.

  Above the chapel were a study and three big classrooms, and next floor up was the long dormitory, where we slept. There was another dormitory on the top floor which wasn’t used much; we could see right out across the harbour to the Heads from there.