School days soon seemed to pass much the same monotonous way as long days at home had; there were just with more kids to play with. Sister Jeanne led them through an agonising adventure of seemingly endless lists of words, and complicated letter formations, which they were required to copy over and over into their exercise books. Pen stains bled into their hands and on to all the wrong places in their books. Stodgy stories were read about well-dressed children who played with obedient cats and dogs, and always seemed to be getting taken out to strange, formal places by vaguely cheerful mums and dads, who also wore fancy clothes and sported perfect hairdos. Shirley could hardly breathe beneath her boredom.
Play time was the best fun.
Her and Lorna would tear around the playground chasing the boys from Lorna’s street, or they would roam around arm in arm with some of the other girls; Clarice O’Brien, Kathleen O’Connor and Mary Scully, and sing the songs that Sister Jeanne had taught them. Out in the yard at lunch, a fascinating game of ‘Witches’ evolved. Next to the convent, between it and the school, there was a wire fence, and a small walkway between the two provided the stage for vulnerable young children to gleefully encounter an evil ‘witch’ who would try to catch them, if they were not quick enough to dash away from her deathly claws, screaming fit to raise the ghosts of the homeless drunks sleeping blocks away in Survey Paddock.
It was a favourite game of this scruffy bunch of poor Irish Catholic children; the rules involved the ones that were caught turning into witches making the game thrilling and terrifying in all the right ways for desk jaded children at lunchtime. Shirley was a garrulous and vivacious child always looking for fun and a laugh as was Lorna, and they were always dead in the middle of a large gaggle of eager, knee-skinned kids.
Back inside the classroom after lunch, usually it was back to more copying, but if the witch magic from lunchtime worked and it was sunny sometimes they were allowed to sit outside and listen to a story. Sister Jeanne would occasionally ride out the last hour before the end of school with some old paper set aside for drawings and she would bring out huge tubs on broken pastels and pencils, and ask the children to stencil patterns on paper and colour them in in silence. The end of day bell was a joyful sound.
After any given agonising day like this, Shirley would walk half the way home with her friends and the last few blocks on her own, where she would find her mother usually locked inside her room, if she wasn’t on one of her extended visits to Tasmania. There was nothing to eat in the house. No matter how hungry she was after a long day at school, there wasn’t a single morsel of food in the house, except what was planned for dinner that night. Shirley’s stomach would do a backflip and land in her head, so that all she could think about was how hungry she was and how long it was before dinner. Sometimes she wandered off down to the Gill’s or Margaret’s house, but quite by chance one day, while she was walking past the local Methodist church, she was invited in with the promise of cordial and biscuits. That was more than enough enticement for Shirley, and this last resort became a haven for her. The folk there were always pleased to see her and knew her name. They asked her to pray with them sometimes, which she felt was a bit of an imposition, but most of the time she sat with them quietly while they all knelt and prayed.
By Grade One and Two, Lorna and Shirley had become the best of friends and her happiest days were when Lorna asked her to back to her house for a play, and her mother Gertie, would greet them with a tray of scones, or sweet biscuits. It was heavenly. They would sit around the table and gorge themselves on the delicious treats and then head outside to play with her tribe of brothers in the large, friendly garden. It was like a wonderland of fruit trees and roses and overgrown geraniums and hydrangeas. The chook pen was held together with a few bits of wire and uncertain palings, but even the chickens seemed happy at Lorna’s place. They would spend their time with Lorna’s enthusiastic brothers, playing hidey, or poison ball or ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf’ until Mr Boland would get home and it was time for dinner.
Lorna’s father was an impressive figure with an equally impressive pot belly. He was always immaculately dressed, even in Summer, with a shirt, tie and brown crimplene vest. His face was as red as a cherry, and as round. His bald head gleamed with a sheen that a shoe shiner would have been jealous of. He filled the house with his voice, energy and presence, yelling for his dinner to be served to him on his metal tray table in the leather throne in the front room where he spent all his time. This was the cue for Gertie to run hurriedly around the house, bent over and urgent, yet smiling beatifically, while bringing him a range of things from tea, to whisky, to slippers, to beer, while she valiantly tried to finish dinner for the seven of them in time. Mr Boland was an SP bookie and his main form of reading was the racing guide, and that was the sole focus of his reading around the clock, seven days a week, every day of the year. He also loved a whisky too, and Shirley always associated that peculiar smell of whisky stained newspaper with Lorna’s house. But she also associated jollity and love with the kitchen of that house, there was laugher in the air, laughter and generosity – something that was somehow absent from her own.
And Lorna … Lorna was a creature of sparkling eyes, and rosy cheeks and conversation and light – who made Shirley cackle constantly with a cascading, infectious, out loud laugh. She trained Shirley how to laugh – and it became a duet of laughter, punctuated by Lorna’s sunny voice making humour out of the everyday. Lorna always made Shirley feel full of joy when she was around her; she made her feel as if everything was sunny and bright in the world, no matter how many whiskies her dad had had, or how many times he yelled at Gertie from the front room to fetch him his needs. As she left their place for Griffith Street, that happy go lucky feeling ebbing weakly away, she would blink up into the greying Richmond sky and breathe its grubby air, knotting her fingers against the cold, Spring wind … and wish that she could stay at Lorna’s forever.
Memoirs and Memories 