Goodbye Girlie

by Patsy Adam-Smith

  ‘He is a bushman. Until last week he was working six days a week in his vegetable garden – no, not in a backyard, in a paddock.’ He had rows of beans and pumpkins climbing the frames, with cucumbers firmly trained to head in the other direction; sweet corn you could eat raw with the milky flow running down your chin, red cabbage and green, tomatoes, silver beet, carrots sweet and young, celery, bright bell capsicums, zucchini, peas to eat by the handful every time you walked out to empty the teapot, turnips with purple tops and yellow swedes, little chillies brightly coloured, and over all the flowers of broad beans, staked up high, tattooing their unique perfume into the nerve of the garden. But now, there he was cornered. It wasn’t right at all.

  When we came back in an hour he had been taken to a ward with three younger men and the four were talking and laughing together, and the young medico had coaxed Dad to tell him how to go about planting a garden in loamy soil. Dad was chiacking the young men, but he was done for. After the operation, we knew.

  He said, ‘Take me home to Gippsland’ where he was born. A terrible drive, sick all the way home. And so we crept as far as the West Gippsland hospital where he lay down on the first bed he saw.

  Old, scholarly Monsignor Daly came to ask him if he would like Extreme Unction, a Catholic rite in time nearing death, and Dad said yes, and insisted on taking the oxygen mask off, with Mons saying ‘Leave it on, Albert’, but Dad calmly refused. The two men had been to the local races several times in Mons’ car and as far as I know horses were their only mutual interest – until now, when they were both dying, Mons with cancer of the throat and only three weeks left to read the racing pages. Dad put out his hand and the two old men shook hands on death’s doorstep. Thank you, Mons,’ Dad said in that quiet way of his. ‘Thank you for your company,’ said Mons.

  I stayed up country with Mum, within walking distance of the hospital. She was anxious, so was I. I wanted to see Dad right to the end of the road, give any aid he needed to assist him to finish his long and noble sojourn in the manner he had journeyed for nearly ninety years, a long and noble time.

  Nobility is not the preserve of the rich and famous and any who had come in contact with this man knew it. It was in his bearing, even when he was telling of the larrikin pranks of his early life in the wild mountains of tall timber, or when he related an incident he had observed, or when he came in, hat in hand, and tipped the contents out on the table to delight Mum: mushrooms he had walked far to find, the first of the year, this he did as a king might bestow jewels on his queen. And mostly his nobility shone out with his quiet acceptance when Mum, in her cruel, burning rages, harangued him, said awful things, although never the truth – that one thing that she had every right to feel bitter, cruel, hateful about she never threw that at him. I now believe that this was never mentioned between them. That she who was barren through no fault of her own body, and he who was the cause of the untitled, secret frustrations that demented and deranged her, had no discussion after his first and only announcement of his one fatal flaw. And there was her innocent, virginal acceptance of him as he was.

  Dad had the calm dignity. When he got a free railway pass to go to Adelaide in the 1930s to watch a cricket match, he and I set off with our basket of food that Mum had prepared and when the fuss about bodyline bowling was going on, Dad just remained seated, his hand firmly on my shoulder, and he said, ‘They shouldn’t have done that’. And we sat back quietly until the hubbub had died down.

  And now he had reached the top of the mountains. From where he lay in the bush hospital he could see the peaks of the beautiful Baw Baws where his childhood tracks petered out. He was ready to lie down there.

  Mum and I drove into Warragul on a delicate mission we felt needed clearing before the death. Monsignor was dying and we thought he was too ill to officiate at Dad’s funeral but we didn’t want to broach the subject in a brutal way. The cancer had eaten Mons’ jaw away, there would be no more operations, no prayers would help him, he was to die. He answered the doorbell at the presbytery. ‘Well now! What incomparable company!’ he laughed with joy. ‘Come in, come in.’

  ‘Albert is dying,’ Mum said. ‘I know, I know,’ his voice was still beautiful with its Australian-broadened Kerry lilt. ‘You’ll be needing a drink.’ ‘Thank you, Monsignor,’ Mum’s anti-drink, icy-pole tongue spake, ‘I don’t drink’. ‘Well, I’m sure young Patsy will join me,’ Mons said, and young Patsy did. The housekeeper brought a tray of tea things in for Mum and after the two elderly ladies discussed the fine embroidery of the traycloth, the housekeeper retired. Mons motioned me to the drinks trolley to pour for the two of us while Mum looked everywhere else. ‘It’s Jamesons,’ Mons said. ‘Not to be spoiled by stinting.’ The glasses were sparkling Waterford, as was the jug that was there for decoration only, not for water. It was going to be a session. ‘You don’t spoil good whiskey with water.’

  And Mons gave us no opportunity to suggest he was not well enough to bury Dad. He had made up his mind.

  We sat with Dad all night while he was dying: Mum, Johnny, who’d been brought up as his son, and me. We eased him during the night, held his hand, kissed him, kept his body comfortable, and just as morning came Mum said, ‘I think he’s leaving us’. And indeed he was. We embraced him, we stroked his loving hands and cheeks, we whispered our love.

  When it was done, I walked out into his garden, that big vegetable garden he had in the paddock behind the house. The last cabbage was still there, and I knelt down, held it to my face. He used to sell the odd lettuce and cabbage to the publican’s wife for money to put a ‘two bob’ bet on the horses. He still had a bit of the larrikin in him.

  This was the last cabbage, and I laid my cheek on it again as though my heart was breaking in anticipation of the years to come without him. I was trying to take in his strength in adversity, the simple goodness of the man.

  Blow the wild whistle through the hills, you Big Wheel men, over the plains, the Mallee, the valleys, up through Sunset Country, through all the miles he and Mum toiled; humble, unassuming, stoic – and laughing.

  And weep for an age that will never come again.

  Our family are country people, and we bury our people as we see fit. John, whom Mum and Dad ‘brought up’, became a Captain in the Country Fire Authority, as was his father-in-law. When his mother-in-law died her eulogy was read in the local Methodist church. ‘She was’, said the clergyman, ‘never far behind the fire brigade wagon. And on two occasions that we know of she was in front of it, because the brigade had alerted her to where we would be making our stand to repel the oncoming flames. We have lurched back into her station many times in many years, and reached out for a steaming cup of tea in one hand and a scone in the other.’

  The town was closed for her funeral. All shops shut, the mourners packing the church, and those who couldn’t get in crowded outside. She was carried out on the shoulders of her kinsmen to the hearse through an avenue of Country Fire fighters in their uniforms. The point was made clear to us, who had deserted the bush for the city, that life out here was still real, the seasons, the triumphs, the tragedies, the lives and deaths were all recorded for eternity in the deep place kept inside each one of us.

  When Cheryl, John’s young wife, died the firemen again formed a guard of honour for by then she had taken on her mother’s Fire Authority mantle. And as well, there was a guard of honour of scores of footballers because this girl had coached young boys and was their idol. Because her funeral was so huge there would not be room in their little church so, although it was not Cheryl’s religion, the priest of the larger Catholic church in the next town offered his church – and still there was not enough room and mourners stood outside the door in great numbers. Never before had I seen so many young lads attend a funeral for a woman; nor had I seen so many boys and men weep for the loss of a member of their community.

  The care we take in burying the people we love is not so widespread in this day and age, but it is the way our family sti
ll does it. I believe it is not only a sign of the deep respect for those we love to bury them with dignity, it is also a help to us when we see the six young kinsmen carrying the coffin aloft on their shoulders, the little children running around, laughing and playing as the sombre words are spoken over the grave and the handful of soil is scattered down, with the relatives and friends sprinkling their remembrances too.

  And then it’s time for tea. It’s an old-fashioned way of going about it, having sandwiches, home-made hot dishes, cakes, tea and coffee, and the young men sit around the back where they won’t be seen and have a beer or two, out of sight of those in the family who are teetotal. And we talk about the old days and the old ways. When Uncle Frank was buried we went back to the house. We were eating cake and my aunt Sarah happened to see some of the young boys getting around past the window into the kitchen. She promptly swept out, found that they had beer, stretched her hand out, and took two open bottles. And while talking to them about any old thing at all, she quietly tipped the beer down the sink and not a one of them had the courage to attempt to stop her. I remember the stunned look on the faces of these smart young men who had backed down to this little woman.

  Of course, there is another side to funerals, and that is that they keep you in touch with the family. It is a great outing and you laugh, talk about things you all did when you were kids, what troubles you got into, what you’re doing at the present time – and it makes for continuity in life.

  The Royal Australian Navy did Dad proud. They sent men to clear the overhanging trees in the paddock-like cemetery in the bush where our family graves are. They sent the White Ensign that would cover his coffin with his cap on top, and the cortege would be preceded by an officer and men in summer whites, and the bugler who was sent to play the final salute, including ‘The Last Post’. My Dad, this old man, had been one of the first to join the Australian Navy when it was formed.

  But it was Monsignor’s day too. It was the last ceremony he would see and he knew it, and he dressed for it. After the church service he had gone back to the presbytery to change. The Princes Highway had been closed to enable the cortege and the hundreds of mourners’ cars to slowly wind out of the town and down the bush road to the cemetery. We waited and waited. The police were getting fidgety and suggested someone might go up and see if Mons would soon be ready, but none had the courage. Finally, twenty minutes later he reappeared. He had changed. He was now wearing the fine vestments made as a farewell gift by the parishioners when he left Ireland as a 24-year-old. Now he was in his nineties. The people of this Gippsland town (not just the parishioners) had made a wonderful gesture: because of his long service to their community they had financed a small cottage in Ireland, and the town council had presented Mons with rod, reel and creel for the days when the salmon would be running.

  But it was too late. I called on him several days after Dad’s funeral, and we lowered a bottle of Jameson’s enough to get us singing – to the obvious alarm of a young priest, acolyte?, who left swiftly when I was introduced to him by Mons as ‘my pagan friend’. ‘God save Ireland sang the heroes,’ we sang with our arms round one another, each with a glass in our hand:

  God save Ireland, cry we all

  Whether on the scaffold high

  Or the battlefield we die

  Sure what matter if for Ireland dear we fall.

  And I kissed Mons goodbye. He had been a good friend to my Father, and neither encouraged nor discouraged him to become a Catholic.

  Mons had once told me of his leaving Ireland and coming to Australia: ‘I would ride my bicycle out over the hills to visit parishioners, and I’d be crying all the way I was so lonely for home, for Ireland.’

  * * *

  When my Mother died her ‘effects’ were put in my hand – only one hand was needed. The bundle included an old, much-battered cricket ball wrapped in a time-stained handkerchief with the legend ‘1913. Gone to Navy.’

  Dad must have left it with his mother before he sailed off. There was a blue cotton bag as long as a pencil, holding my long black curls which were cut off in 1939. (‘Your mother will kill me!’ the barber in our country town had wailed.) The only other inheritance was wrapped in yet another stained handkerchief: a tightly rolled wad of letters. It took care and time to unwrap the fragile collection. The first group were letters from my Father to my Mother during their courtship.

  ‘Dear Birdie’ the first letter began. It was the pet name of my Mother, Bridget. Dad had been invalided out of the Navy, damaged, before the war ended, and he had met Mum at a dance in Gippsland. Only a short time later he wrote to her to say he would be ‘no use’ to her.

  Dad was a country boy who had never been to a city or even a large town until he had gone to Melbourne in 1913 and was posted to the first flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia. Five years later, when he was invalided home, he got a job on the cable trams in Melbourne for four weeks but sped to his home in Gippsland every chance he got. He was the youngest of a family of thirteen and his mother doted on him. The first letter was from his mother, the Scots lady, my Grandmother Isabella Adam-Smith, and it exposes her lack of schooling and her love of family which included even me.

  Satrday nigh

  My dear son Albert and daughter Birda,

  Heir I am a gain in good helth so is Ted he is still working on the railway. Tonight he was going to a uca party yes they are talking about rising the pencions again but they take their time about it. No letters from the west oh well I dont care dear Birda I wish you could have seen your lilick bush it was lovely. I inclose a small sprae well my children I close with love to you & Birda and Katran & my littel friend Jean. So God bless you all loving mother

  I Smith

  xxxxxxxxxx

  (Birda = Birdie; Ted was one of her sons; uca = euchre; west refers to the fact that three of her sons were in Western Australia; lilick = lilac; Katran = Kathleen; Jean = me.)

  The letters weren’t in chronological order, and in the next one Dad writes in a splendid hand from ‘Bourke Street, Melbourne’. To dear Birdie. I wonder what the devil young Birdie thinks of this chicken now.’ It seems he had promised to meet her at a dance and didn’t turn up (although he had ridden to Neerim, many miles past her lodgings). ‘Can you swallow that excuse Birdie? It’s the best one I have thought of. Are you going to the dance at Darnum tonight? I am going by train, so come, thats a good kid. Believe me to be, as silly as ever, Albert Smith.’

  The next letter says that he will not be going out until she returns from a visit to her parents, but ‘I think the heavens have been torpedoed the way the rain is pelting down and I hope there will be better days ahead – both for you and me.’ He writes love letters denying that he is the ‘wild devil’ she claims him to be, and not the ‘out-law’, nor is he ‘past redemption’. ‘I wonder what she really thinks of me?’ he asks in the letter and, no doubt, asks of himself. Could Dad ever have written this? In that era?

  Dad went to war with his nephew Jackie Pearce, who was his best friend as well as being two years older than him. Actually, by the time he was born Dad had several nephews and some called him Uncle! Dad and Jackie remained the happiest of companions till the end of their long lives, both of them outrageous pranksters and teases, and both were joyous company and brought laughter with them as if they had been put on earth to cheer up everyone, including those who daily watch for the sky to fall on them.

  But Jackie, who had been in hospital in France for five months with gunshot wounds, ‘had his eye on’ a dour young lady (who later aged to an even more dour older married woman) and Dad’s letters of 1918 make it clear: ‘Dad and I had the pleasure of beating Jack and the famous Miss Ada last night at cabbage.’ The two young men, invalided home from war, had not lost their knockabout larrikinism. On New Year’s Eve they removed a jinker and horse that was tied to the horserail at the front of the Neerim Hotel, took the horse to one side of a gate, locked the gate, and put the jinker shaft through the pa
nels of the gate and reharnessed the horse. It would have been seen merely as a New Year’s Eve prank had the owner not been drinking heavily. He staggered out to go home and said ‘Gee up!’ to the horse who was waiting patiently on the other side of the gate. As it was, the two young men, still in uniform because they had no other clothes, had to ‘scarper’ and gallop hell-for-leather the 18 miles home.

  There’s another letter, written when ‘Birdie’ is again visiting her parents: ‘Jack is playing cards with my father and he looks over to me now and again and smiles. I guess he knows who I am writing to.’ Dad is love-sick, he writes every day his ‘Birdie’ is away from him. ‘I could write a long diary every day to you.’

  A vast amount of loving comes through in these letters and it makes me wonder if there was more time to be loving in those days when we had time to write.

  I would like to do something desperate today to cause some excitement, it’s a very mad feeling. I love to see things stirring and to be amongst it. I wish I could be different and tear away these feelings, but I am always happy when I feel like that. But tonight will be dull. I am going to tackle Comin’ Through the Rye. (If I get lost in the rye I hope someone I am always thinking of will come to my rescue.)

  He must have given her a bit of a run-around according to his letters because three times he failed to meet her at dances where she’d ridden at his request. But his letters were doting: ‘I am writing this in bed, so it ought to be sweet. Awkward as it is to write in this position, I have managed to scrawl more than you do.’

  My Mother, ‘Birdie’, had six sisters and three of them at various times ‘worked’ for Mrs Gay, although both my Mother and Mrs Gay’s daughter spoke of it not so much as mistress and maid but as giving country girls from a good family the opportunity to learn another way of life and work. As wife of the man who surveyed and built many of the early roads in Gippsland, Mrs Gay entertained and in this way, the Adams girls learned a style unlikely to come their way otherwise.