Hear the Train Blow

by Patsy Adam-Smith

  Mum and Mrs Young went across and offered to lay him out. Mum took one of my plain white cotton singlets, a pair of white socks and a white linen sheet. They washed him and dressed him in the socks and singlet and the red flannel nightshirt and wrapped the sheet about him. That afternoon Mr Marvel drove into Numurkah to the undertaker with the little boy, now wrapped in the horse rug, and left him at the makeshift morgue. He brought the sheet across to Mum that night.

  ‘You don’t want to go losing a good sheet, missus,’ he said. Mum told him we would all be going in to the funeral, but he told us we were too late.

  ‘They were going to get on with it when I left.’

  Dad asked, ‘Weren’t you wanting to see the little chap to the end of the road, Syd?’ But he said no, there was no use crying over spilt milk.

  In our house we cried often over that little boy as he lay lonely in death and we listened to the thud of the horses’ hooves beating by each dawn as someone else exercised the trotters.

  THEY’RE OFF

  The bookmakers shouted the odds, the horses were lined up at the barrier, the starters looked to their timepieces, and Waaia races were off to a flying start.

  The racecourse was Ernie Brenzing’s paddock two miles out of town. For days beforehand women had been cooking. Our wood-fuel copper had bubbled all one day with Christmas puddings and all the next with hams. The kitchen table was a litter of flour, icing sugar, eggs, cream, sandwich fillings, sweets to be sold in baskets, and vegetable salads. There was so much of everything that it spilled over to the table on the back verandah and the table in the lounge. The suite in the lounge – we called it the ‘front room’ in those days – was out of sight beneath boxes of sponges, brandy snaps, cream puffs and pastry boats. Mick and I poked our fingers into everything when we could get away from the everlasting washing-up. We were still on holidays after Christmas. It was mid-summer and the heat was terrific. The wood stove kept the temperature in the kitchen well above the century. At midday we took the dishes out to the tank-stand and went on washing up there away from the enclosed heat, but Mum must bear with it till the end of the day. She was cooking for the luncheon booth.

  Dad had taken the afternoon off from work to help erect the judge’s box (a hessian shade over his head) and mend the railings round the course and put up the tents and marquees for the serving of meals, and for the ‘refreshment booth’ as well as the hessian-encircled lavatories which he called the ‘Houses of Parliament’.

  That night we children were ordered to bathe in the tin bath out in the wash-house, a thing we normally did only on Saturdays, and told to say our prayers quickly and get into bed. For Mum to tell us to say prayers ‘quickly’ meant that she was very busy indeed. We were scarcely in bed when she hauled us out again. I was to try on a new dress she was making for me, Mick was to put her ‘good’ dress on to see if it fitted. Mine satisfied Mum, a few tucks here and there and it would be finished. Then she turned to Mick.

  ‘Oh no! Oh dear God! Kathleen! Pull it down! You couldn’t have grown that much!’ Mum tugged at the dress. ‘When did you have it on last?’

  Dad came to the door to see what the hullabaloo was about. Then he saw Mick. He laughed. ‘Whacko!’ said Dad. ‘Roll ’em, girls, roll ’em, and show the boys your knees.’

  ‘Albert!’ Mum exclaimed, shocked.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that song,’ Dad said. ‘Everyone was singing it when we first met and all the girls were rolling their stockings down and showing as much leg as Mickie . . .’

  ‘That was different.’ Mum had the last word. Dad took one final look at Mick’s long, coltish legs sticking down from this high-waisted, three-inches-above-the-knee dress and began to laugh again and retreated.

  Mum was to be at the course by 10 a.m. to organise an early meal for arrivals who brought horses from places as far away as Seymour. Before that she had to fill the cakes with cream in the cool of the morning and send them away packed in boxes on the tray of the hotel truck that was picking up the foodstuffs from all the womenfolk of the town. Then she must leave everything in readiness for the guard on the ‘Beetle’ who had offered to ‘do’ the train for her and the guard on the goods train who had promised likewise. But before she left our hats and dresses were spread on the bed ready for us; mine, pink cotton with white pique collar and cuffs and my old white hat done up with a new ribbon band. Mick’s dress had been let down, let out and titivated till it looked like new to match her new hat.

  As soon as Mum and Dad left for the course we got into this finery and went over to the Marvels’ place. All morning Mick rode one of the trotters round the paddock and when it was time to leave for the races her dress was wrinkled, concertinaed and dirty.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she complained when I said it looked awful. Mick’s adolescence was passing without the faintest discomfort to her. She was too preoccupied with the fun of living to have time to spare for it. That morning her long legs had hung down eighteen inches past those of her friends the Martin twins, as the three of them rode on the one horse round Marvels’ paddock, but she felt no embarrassment. Her new straw hat was nice but she had twirled it round on the end of her forefinger stuck up in the crown and now it had spiralled up to a peak like a witch’s hat. She had a small head and couldn’t keep the hat on, so put the elastic band under her chin instead of behind her hair.

  As for me, the Marvels had helped me achieve – with a new toilette – an elegance of appearance that made me long to know the meaning of the words dernier cri, which I’d seen in a book under an illustration that I thought I now resembled. The fullness of the skirt was pulled to the back leaving the front flat and tight. The back was bunched into a sort of bustle and the whole thing cinched in with the belt till I could scarcely breathe. The white panama hat that pulled right down on my head with a brim sticking out for three inches was now unrecognisable. A dent in the crown of the type slashed into men’s hats lifted the whole creation up high on my head. The brim was turned up at the back and pulled down in the front over one eye. The pink ribbon was dispensed with entirely. I should have liked to dispense too with the long cotton stockings, but that would have taken more courage than I possessed. Stockings and legs were matters of modesty.

  On the way to the races, cars and jinkers passed us on the dirt road. Dust hung like a ribbon along where we walked. We could have moved over closer to the fence and avoided it, but we just didn’t want to miss anything. There were horses in boxes behind some of the cars, jockeys rode other horses at a high-legged canter, people we had never seen before went by. A kid in a passing car threw an apple core and it hit Mick and she picked it up with a handful of dust to throw it back, but the hot air of the passing cars tossed the dust back over us. We were hot and perspiration ran in gutters down our dusty cheeks. Mick’s perspiration-wet hair hung like rats’-tails, mine looked like a deflated black umbrella.

  I knew better than to go near Mum in my ‘improved’ outfit. I waited at the side of the luncheon booth while Mick went in for orders. I could hear Mum speaking. She said we were not to go near the bookmakers, we were not to speak to strange men, we were not to go to any cars with strange men or women, and to remember that there were men drinking here and you know what that means, and do not sit on the seat until you have put paper on it, and here is a shilling each and run along and enjoy yourselves because I’m busy. In the gloom and bustle of the tent she hardly noticed Mick, who came out and repeated the speech to me as, ‘Here’s a shilling.’

  This shilling didn’t go far, even in those days. We bought a saveloy and a roll (the roll was the great attraction – I hadn’t seen one before). Then we bought two navel oranges and a bag of lollies and a bottle of raspberry soda which looked like pink froth when you shook it and made you sick when you drank it. Then we heard a loud wail from the whistle of the goods train away off on the track – cock-a-doodle-doo it went as it rolled down the line, partly in good wishes for the celebration and partly a warning t
hat the ice-cream packed in dry ice had been left at the station. Soon it would be brought here to the races and we had no money. This dilemma was solved in (of all places) the lavatory. The ‘Ladies’ was a can with a wooden seat in the centre of an arena encircled by a six-foot hessian wall. There was a board outside with LADIES written on it.

  We were about to leave the convenience when a lady (we’d never seen her before, as we repeated to each other later) entered. We stepped politely aside for her, but she came to us and gave us threepence to stay outside the entrance and make sure no one came in. We couldn’t see the necessity for this.

  ‘I think she wants to change her dress or something,’ Mick said, but she didn’t stay long and she didn’t change her dress.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said when she left. ‘You are good girls.’ Mick charged off with the threepence and bought a Dixie, which we shared. We had just finished this when a second lady approached and said the first lady had told her about us and would we stand guard for her too. Again we collected threepence and again we bought a Dixie. Yet another lady came to us. Oh, we were on to a good thing all right!

  But this was the end of our windfall. Through no fault of ours this lady’s privacy was not complete: a horse skittered away from the starting line and pranced sideways like a crab with the jockey on its back and turned to bolt only a few feet from us. It propped with the jockey hanging on high in the air above the hessian wall of the lavatory. The woman screamed and raced off pulling her skirt down and completely forgetting that she was in our debt.

  Some of the jockeys, we thought, looked like men we knew, but surely they couldn’t be, not in those magnificent, flamboyant silks. The start was the best part of the race to watch. They were all there together, the glistening, shining horses, the men glittering, dazzling in their scintillating colours. The bookmakers were yelling incomprehensible jargon and the crowd were yelling to jockeys they knew. Then they were off and that was the last we saw of them for a while as trees and a dip in the ground hid them from view. Interest flagged for a time and many now sauntered off for a drink to wash the dust down.

  We saw Dad among the crowd under the bookmakers’ umbrellas. He had put two shillings on a horse and he told us its name so we could watch it win.

  ‘These are my daughters,’ he told the Melbourne bookmaker.

  ‘Half your luck, mate,’ the bookmaker said. Dad told us he would buy us another sav and a roll when his horse won. It didn’t, and we knew he didn’t have another two shillings so we deserted him.

  At what we considered to be afternoon teatime by the state of our stomachs we went across to Mum. She was just coming out of the tent with the other women for a breather. In the blinding sunlight she saw us and stopped, staring.

  ‘Dear God help me,’ she sighed aloud as she took in our ensembles.

  That night the race ball was held in the Waaia hall. This hall was quite familiar to us kids. The school concerts were held there and we’d played the piano and sung and danced there many a time. While the men got the fire going in the open fireplace in the little supper room out at the back and filled the kerosene tins ready for tea and coffee, the big boys scraped slivers from candles and we slid up and down the floor on a stone-filled box bound with an old blanket to make the boards slippery.

  Mum had put the flat irons on the stove when we got home from the races and sponged and pressed Mick’s dress back to respectability and brushed her hair till it shone like copper. My belt was let out (‘Phew!’ Dad expelled air as it was levered off), my curls were re-done, stockings washed and dried in the oven. Mum wore a pink ankle-length voile frock, Dad his navy blue suit. We had had six visitors for tea; two were fettlers but the other four were strangers – Mum had heard them say they were staying for the ball so she had asked them home. Their two big cars stood opulently outside our home. I hoped everyone would see them. We didn’t ever own a car.

  Because it was a pleasant, clear night we all walked to the hall half a mile away. In the cool air the mingling smell of the berries and flowers of the male and female pepper-corn trees was fresh and cleansing after the dust of the day. Curlews cried and keened on the edges of the wheat paddocks. The lantern hanging from the verandah of the Waaia Hotel flickered brightly through the newly cleaned glass. Mrs Beswick, the proprietor of the hotel, whom we called Mrs B, was to come with us. Mum considered it was somehow respectable here to have a publican for a friend, whereas she considered that it wasn’t elsewhere. Out came Mrs B, her big bosom gleaming in the moonlight in a white satin dress. Some Sunday nights she would ask Mum and Dad to play euchre and we kids would watch that bosom. As the game began she would lift it onto the table with both hands and it would move slowly across a large area like molten lead and then, as if it had cooled down, would cease flowing and heave to a standstill. Each time Mrs B dealt the cards this mass would move. Our Mum was a neat little person, a tightly corseted contrast to this undisciplined bulk. Now, apart from the bosom, there was something else about Mrs B. She was smoking!

  When I read now of the ‘flaming twenties’ I feel we must have missed them, because this was the only woman I saw smoke. The few I saw wearing lipstick at this time were definitely regarded as being ‘bad’ in our circle. But Mrs B was ‘different’ because she was a friend.

  Everyone came to the Waaia Race Ball. Mrs Marvel came dressed in the outfit she milked in, the Morans from out Broken Creek way in their outdated finery they’d brought with them when they arrived from Ireland.

  When the music struck up for the first dance most of the kids raced round grabbing each other and set off dancing together. The adults avoided them as best they could. Dad took Mum by the arm and began to waltz. Most of the women had partners. Alex Walker, who had ridden a winner today and who could whistle up any bird in the bush so well that he later became famous all over Australia for it, asked Mickie to dance. I thought she would be awful; she looked like a crane with her long, gangly legs. But no, she moved with amazing grace on the floor.

  Everything was wonderful, the music, the movement, the dance. And then: ‘May I have the pleasure of this dance?’ I was being invited to dance! I was eight years old and short and round and didn’t get on too well with other kids, but I was being asked to dance!

  It was ‘old’ Bill Leaf, an elderly, small-scale squatter. I wanted to dance. Instead I said, ‘I can’t dance.’ I’d heard about Mr Leaf’s dancing. They said he could waltz better than anyone in the district.

  ‘You never thought your sister could move like that till she took the floor, did you?’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to move like that. Come on now.’

  Then I was away – 1, 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3 – balancing on one foot then the other.

  ‘Right now, round we go,’ the old man said. ‘Long, shortshort, long, shortshort’, round and round we went. Once he began circling he didn’t stop, round and round and round. He held me in the very old manner, my right arm doubled behind my back, my left hand on his upper arm. I was so secure I didn’t falter and when the music stopped I clapped and clapped for it to start again. A sleeper-cutter was playing the gumleaf and a railway fencer had a concertina. They both knew us Smiths and began to play again and off we went once more – 1, 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3.

  ‘Long, shortshort, long, shortshort, hold your head up, never look at your feet, back straight, heels off the ground. You might have eggshells pinned under your heels when you’re in competitions.’ Tight little circles round and round.

  When it ended he told me I was good. ‘You move as well as your sister.’ I raced over to Mickie.

  ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘Old Bill Leaf’s got grandchildren.’

  ‘Alex Walker’s got his teeth out.’

  Kevin was sitting on the edge of the stage learning to play the gumleaf. I said to him, ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can you hear this?’ He was playing ‘I’ll string along with you’, and I could recognise it.

  Later a s
leeper-cutter took me up in a three-hop polka. 1, 2, 3 hop, 1, 2, 3 hop, round and round, arms gripping arms. Every now and then my partner would give a high call like a highland dancer, and we’d laugh and go at it harder still. Faster and faster grew the music. The concertina-player was sweating and he wiped his brow on his shirt-sleeve without missing a beat. The axeman playing the gumleaf would ‘blow’ one and reach in his pocket for another and fix it to his lips and blow the reed-like music again.

  See me dance the polka,

  Just see me twirling around,

  See me dance the polka,

  My feet scarce touch the ground,

  sang my partner. ‘That’s the first song Nellie Melba sang in public. She was at a school concert.’

  Dancing stopped while supper was handed around, the men carrying big trays with the tea and coffee and the women and children carrying cakes and sandwiches.

  ‘A real blowout’, was how Dad described the supper. There were sausage rolls and sandwiches, sponges four inches high filled with cream, sponge rolls, Napoleon cakes, custard slices, chocolate éclairs, meringues, sponge kisses, lamingtons, jelly cakes, and ‘wheat stacks’ (a name Kevin had given to the big three-deckers of chocolate, vanilla and raspberry-coloured cake joined with whipped cream and iced all over with chocolate icing dusted with coconut, which before serving were cut into manageable slices).

  There had been two ‘sets’ before supper, square dances, four couples to each set. They’d had the Waltz of Cotillons and the Fitzroy Quadrilles. Now Mr Leaf, who was MC, called, ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Take your partners for the Lancers!’ All the young men shouted, ‘Yahoo!’ and dived for the liveliest girls. Five sets soon filled, then three couples looked for a fourth. Mr Leaf took my arms and called, ‘I’ll lead from the floor.’ The concertina burst straight into ‘Dixie’ and we were off.