The Missing Heir

by Kylie Tennant

  There was never any time for breakfast. A small cup of tea and a piece of toast perhaps. Shoes polished, hymn books, Bibles collected, each child with a two-shilling piece for the plate, best clothes, formidable frills, polished shoes, instructions about dusting the seat before you sat down and not chewing your hat elastic. The grown-ups put ten shillings each in the plate. Remember at this time Grandpa was bankrupt. But, as Grandma said, you saved on doctors’ bills because in our church doctors were regarded with disapproval. I have known Grandpa when I was obviously ill to say doubtfully, ‘Perhaps if we just gave her a teaspoonful of warm brandy with a little sugar in it?’

  We had to leave ourselves plenty of time to walk to the boat. In our best clothes a last-minute gallop was out of the question and Grandma was no sprinter. We trudged doggedly in our raincoats if it was wet and the ferryboat heaved and staggered over mountains of water rolling through the Heads. The only time we ever missed church was when it was so rough the ferry boats stopped. Our small shoes often squelched wet marks on the Sunday school floor.

  We were not allowed to run around on the ferry. We had to go over our Sunday school lesson. Grown-ups talked to other grownups who attended our church every Sunday.

  From the Quay we still had the slow ride in a tram that seemed to have a grievance because it had to run on Sunday — the slowest, dirtiest, oldest tram in the world. The corner of the street where we got off was one of the most miserable slums in the city. I did not know that the man I was to marry was living with his family in one of those slums not a mile away. He would have been twelve when I was five. The only patches of colour were the beer advertisements outside the hotels, advertisements that showed people surfing, playing tennis, drinking beer and enjoying themselves. We knew these advertisements by heart because there were only shut-up shops, a grey street with tramlines, rows of small, grim houses where women lounged in doorways to watch us go past.

  Sunday school was a weary buzzing of little flies beating up and down the dim panes of theology. Our Sunday school got to work on the Ten Commandments and I felt there was some kind of a discrepancy because if any family remembered the Sabbath Day to keep it holy it was us; but as to doing ‘no manner of work’ — how-the-hell, as my father would say, did they ever think we could get to church if we didn’t get up and work like beavers? I asked about committing adultery but got no satisfaction out of the saintly lady who taught us. She was rather old and wore a fly veil with velvet spots.

  When we came out of Sunday school we had a long wait for our elders to pour out of church. Then they stood about talking, ‘reflecting love’ was the way they put it, with other church members.

  My mother once complained that Mortal Mind was very powerful and insidious. She was inclined to go to sleep in church just when she should be listening to the Truth. The trams only ran once an hour on Sunday and we adjoined to the corner under the beer signs — usually waiting in a gritty wind which that particular corner seemed to breed for itself. When we reached Circular Quay we waited again for the ferry. We never reached home before three and we had started before eight.

  Hungry? We were so wolfish, starved and ravenous that visions of roast potatoes in tints of brown and bronze, tender green beans, cauliflower, perhaps tomato pie, rich thick gravy and a roast carved by Grandpa, then, say, pudding and custard … No wonder religion is associated in my mind with an aching void in the pit of the stomach.

  ‘Why is it that children always behave worse on Sundays?’ my mother asked plaintively. The ferry trip was never less than three quarters of an hour and the walk to Lauderdale just about finished us. The dinner had yet to be cooked. By that time we felt that only a little milk and water should be taken for fear of imperilling our lives.

  I think, in some queer way, Grandma enjoyed our hunger as a tribute. She would not give up midday dinner. Finally she stayed home and cooked it and everyone else went to church. She was not very accurate in her timing and our dinner was rather hard and baked into a brown ring round the plate if we missed the boat.

  When I heard about castaways or hermits in a desert I felt they had never had to endure waiting for a tram in a gritty wind at Darlinghurst for an hour after enduring Sunday school. I think even my mother was relieved to move into Condamine Street with the Parent and as Grandpa sold Lauderdale and their rented house was too distant, church was given up. ‘One thing,’ Grandma mused, ‘Even if we had to make an effort it’s nice to know the children will reap the benefit all their lives.’ When I married I found my husband was addicted to going to church. After the training I had had his church-going was a picnic by comparison.

  My poor young parents really tried to be domesticated when we first moved in to the terrace house in Condamine Street, above North Harbour. The Parent even took us swimming one morning but there was a steep hill to climb coming home and my mother didn’t care for swimming as she had a fair skin. My father soon reverted to being a member of the Manly Surf Lifesaving team at the weekend, playing tennis on Saturday afternoon. As he always had to travel by tram to the boat and then take the ferry to the city he must have put in about two hours morning and evening just getting to work and coming home again. If he called in to a warm hotel to enjoy a little masculine companionship on the way home his dinner was frequently burnt. One night he came home with a Presbyterian minister he had met on the tram and, in a spirit of beery sentimentality, dragged him home to christen us. My mother was never anything but hospitable to a guest and always greeted the Parent’s chance-met acquaintance with good humour. On this occasion — we two little girls accepted being christened as we accepted everything else that was inexplicable adult behaviour — we were perplexed but polite.

  My mother was having one of her bouts of gaiety when she went out playing accompaniments at parties to which my father refused to go. They went out together to play cards but when Mother stayed out rather late one night the Parent locked her out in a storm of bad temper and she smashed the glass panes of the back door with an axe. The war was on again.

  My father’s virtues or vices (you can take them from one or another angle) included ‘coarse brutality’ and ‘piggishness’ — equating rough masculine conversation and an interest in food. He would gloomily and savagely put up with meals that were a little more than domestic revenge, to a chorus of reproaches that he never thought of anything but his stomach and that no one could provide the meals he expected on the money he gave mother for housekeeping.

  The great dramas over a new pair of children’s shoes or the gas bill — which could be sung as the first act of an opera — were often just amateur talent seeking an outlet. After all, if a man says: ‘I’ll give you a cheque, darling’ there’s nothing in it. But if he screams ‘Your extravagance is killing — killing me’, he can go on to review all the cruel times when shoes were needed, with the party of the second part providing an antistrophe on intense meanness brought on by a blow on the head when he was a boy. My sister and I had learnt our parts which were pleading with tearful fervour for whatever was required and falling upon the provider with gratitude, hugs and kisses when, at last, amid our cheers, the Parent, in a burst of nobility, gave way and agreed to a new pair of shoes for one of us. The other, who had burst out the toecaps before time, must make do until the next act of the drama. By this means the Parent obtained the utmost emotional return for small sums dealt out. I did not always join in the chorus of praise and thanks. I had begun my lifelong distrust of emotion, temperament and lack of discipline. I avoided scenes with distaste and began to go and live at Grandma’s on my own account. I would just quietly depart and refuse to come back until they settled down.

  Sometimes we all fled through the night in a storm of crockery like refugees. At others Mother would leave a note: ‘Tom, I am going home and taking the children with me. On thinking it over, Tom, I have decided we can never make a go of it so I had better get a divorce. There is some cold meat in the ice chest. P.S. Don’t forget your collars are at the laundry.’r />
  My grandparents were living in a roomy rented house within walking distance of us after they sold Lauderdale. My aunt Beryl and Uncle Toss with the infant Brian, all gold curls and industrious mechanical skills, were in the next street to us. Grandfather was building them a house on a nearby block and another for himself in Rosedale Avenue which, with the Australian lack of any word sense, was called Rosedale just as Lauderdale had been called so for Lauderdale Avenue. In the rented house was the pipe organ saved from Lauderdale; then sold because the rented house was too small for it. They kept the piano on which my grandmother and mother played. There were great wattle trees in the garden which I climbed and a rabbit which my grandfather had caught in his hands.

  We enjoyed Condamine Street although we never knew whether the dessert would reach the table or come hurtling across the room. On one occasion, by accident, mother managed to score a plate on the side of the Parent’s neck. He rushed from one mirror to the next staunching the scratch. ‘She’s severed the jugular vein,’ he yelled tragically. ‘I’m bleeding to death I tell you.’ My little sister said ‘Fine’ and went on eating.

  Matters reached such a pass that a boyhood sweetheart of Mother’s appeared one night and urged her to throw in her lot with him as he was leaving for India. Doffie and I were all in favour of this though it would mean leaving the neighbourhood gang of children with whom we fought and played very rough games, stealing the neighbours’ flowers, daring each other to feats of bravery and roving. We urged her to leave with this amiable stranger but she sentimentally insisted on remaining with the Parent ‘for the sake of the children’. We were disgusted. What did she mean: ‘the sake of the children’?

  Grandpa presently moved into Rosedale and his finances, as a result of fearfully hard work, were on the upgrade. He agreed to pay for her divorce. ‘But make up your mind, Kath,’ he said sternly. ‘Either go back to Tom or get a divorce and be done with it. I’m not going to pay solicitor’s expenses to have you throw the thing up in the middle. You’ll have to promise me you won’t go back to him.’

  One of the great rows in Condamine Street was over our schooling. I was to go from the dear little dame school at the top of our street to the public school where the neighbouring children went in a tram to Manly. On the first day there I did not mind the asphalt playground and its yelling hordes but when introduced to the classroom I broke into screams and sobs. The teacher had to send me out to sit in the playground all day. The next day was no better.

  ‘What is the matter with her?’ one teacher asked another.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  I had found I was in a gaol. The door was shut, the windows were too high up for a tiny girl to climb out. I did not know until then that I was claustrophobic. I couldn’t even have pronounced the word. I just lost my breath and screamed.

  My mother took me away and introduced me to the private school, Brighton College, where she had spent her school years. ‘I only sat in the back seat and dreamed out the window,’ she admitted. Also she had carved her initials K.T. so deeply into a desk that I was occasionally called up and had to explain that it was not K.T. for Kylie Tennant but Katherine Tolhurst. ‘My mother,’ I said simply. That desk was always following me around — not in the kindergarten which had French windows and doors always open. I was very happy to be there after the public school. My father was furious. At the public school the education was free. At a private school you had to pay for it. Thereafter he took his revenge by owing the school fees, refusing to pay for textbooks or uniforms. No wonder my mother ran into debt or had to cajole him when he grumbled. As a boy he had finished his education at Shore, a private school, because Australian snobbery still takes children from public schools to ‘finish’ them at private school just so that they can claim the accolade later. My mother’s view was that public school children were rough and ‘common’. Girls must have beautiful manners.

  The Parent’s attention had been attracted to the fact that I wrote little stories. He proudly marched me down to visit my dear Aunt Arbie who had married Uncle Stan, a journalist. ‘Shut her up in a room,’ he proclaimed, ‘and she’ll write something.’ The experiment was promptly tried. ‘Write,’ he commanded. As all the windows were shut I scribbled feverishly (some mush) in order to get out. Uncle Stan was duly impressed. The Parent, from that time, never ceased to boast of my queer habit.

  The hegira to Rosedale — we went from Condamine Street and never saw it again — left the Parent at a loose end. He set up another establishment over in Harbord with a lady friend. He was a truly domesticated man, demanding an audience and companionship. His mother and sisters were very shocked and set their faces against this rift with his wife and daughters. He had moved up the hierarchy of his firm and, in those days, a divorce was looked on as no advantage to a man’s prospects.

  ‘I only stayed with him for the sake of the children,’ Mother would repeat.

  ‘Keep the children out of it,’ Grandfather said firmly.

  ‘Yes,’ we shouted. ‘Are we going to get our divorce or aren’t we?’

  Mother promised faithfully and we danced round her. We played at divorces and wore Grandmother’s white fur as the judge’s wig.

  We heard what our solicitor said and were interested in the necessity of Evidence. It was no use shooing us away. We discussed our Divorce with two girls at school who had one. ‘Even the dog is better now,’ they said.

  There was the excitement of mother and a detective raiding the Parent’s establishment and finding him in bed with his lady housekeeper. Mother had been advised to take a notebook and pencil so that it could ‘count in the Evidence’.

  ‘How do you spell dreadful,’ she asked, ‘d–r–e–t–f–u–l?’ I told her the correct spelling. The more we heard Mother’s Evidence the more we hoped the detective would do better.

  ‘We knocked at the door of the flat’ Mother’s Evidence began, ‘and Tom came to the door. He was wearing his blue pyjamas with the red stripe I gave him last Christmas.’

  ‘Do you think you’d better say that?’ Grandma broke in, pursing her lips as though she was tasting sour jam. ‘It seems unnecessary.’ Mother looked stubborn. ‘I was to notice what he was wearing. I said, “Well, Tom, this is a dreadful thing after all these years.” And he said, “Well, I thought you had left me for good, Kath. Don’t tell me you’re back again.”’

  ‘I wouldn’t put that in,’ Grandma interrupted.

  Mother drew a line through the last sentence. ‘I forgot to say that before we went to the door we exchanged several remarks through the window where he was in bed with this horrible-looking girl in the cheapest blue milanese.’

  Grandpa lost patience. ‘Why couldn’t you have put that in first? Now you’ll have to rewrite the whole thing.’

  ‘Well, the girl said, “Oh goodness, Tom, here’s your wife.” And Tom said, “Yes, and I bet that mean-looking streak with her is a detective.” Then he said, “Well, Kath, this will teach you that if you can leave home so can I.”’

  We were afraid Mother’s Evidence would ruin everything. The solicitor made her rewrite it but said our divorce was ‘a cinch’. We used to hear her her evidence after we had done our homework. Then, as might have been expected, the Parent turned on the charm. Mother’s solicitor was not told she was meeting him for lunch in the city.

  My poor young aunt had died and left three little children whom Grandma had insisted on taking over, so Rosedale was rather crowded. Grandpa realised first that it was no use. He began to draw plans for a new house for Mother. Doffie and I sat gloomily on the back door of Rosedale. ‘It’s no use,’ we agreed. ‘We’ll never get our divorce.’

  Our new house was in Hill Street above the golf links. It was a very steep street and we were to live in it until we grew up. The Parent came home one night proudly bearing a brass plate. ‘I have thought of a name for the house,’ he announced. ‘I have decided to call it “Hillside”.’ Mother thought this was a splendid name. After all, it
was on the side of a hill, wasn’t it?

  While we were at Rosedale waiting for the divorce that never happened we missed a term at school and were kept home because Grandma was convinced the Parent would steal us away. I produced my first newspaper, writing it out by hand. This was a pleasant time of leisure but I found the newspaper became so popular that my hand ached from writing out copies so I gave it up. Our two younger boy cousins, Brian and Berry, were staying at Rosedale while their mother had a baby — red-headed Lasca, so I had a little team always demanding I invent games and complaining I had gone inside to read. Grandma complained I was ‘reading my eyes out’. Grandpa’s garden was rather trampled. We also had to do the daily lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly which I detested. It was full of words like ‘metaphysical’ and I distrusted abstract words. I still do. On Saturday morning I objected to having my hair washed with Lux and ammonia because the ammonia stung my eyes. I would climb up to the roof and write doggerel or encourage a family of mice who lived under the back doorstep. The dog gave me away by sniffing there and Grandpa massacred the poor mice. My relatives were impressed by my doggerel. Mother sent it to a poetical magazine which reported ‘child’s verse of more than usual promise’ which I thought sickening. Grandpa gave me a subscription to the Manly School of Arts Library. There was no children’s section and the fat librarian detested me as I never read the ladylike fiction which I considered slushy. I started at A for astronomy. (I still scan any new discoveries in astronomy.) I liked travel books. I developed a fondness for the roman policier; detectives with bowler hats and dandruff on their collars, who would trace a railway ticket until they unearthed the body. I demanded the right to go into the city library on Saturday morning where, starting at A, I discovered archeology and anthropology. I then read straight through three volumes of Frazer’s Golden Bough. I chanced on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, and read anything I could find that he wrote. I pronounced his famous name like some obscure disease (Frood) because, of course, I never met anyone who could discuss his work with me. My ambition was to go to the Gobi Desert and dig up ancient cities. I reckoned that anywhere people had been living for centuries would turn into deserts and the Gobi sounded promising.