Chapter 18

Waiting for Fred

During Fred’s naval service, his younger sister Thelma and Shirley forged a solid friendship over their shared years in the Children of Mary and the thriving social life of the Richmond catholic community, and this grew even stronger after the departure of Fred to the war. Shirley wasn’t interested in dating or hanging around the other boys like Lorna was, so even though she and Lorna still shared their usual nights of dancing, movies and choir nights, Shirley spent a lot of time with Thelma and at the Milton’s home. The girls both loved dancing, and most Saturday nights they would head to the St Kilda Town hall where a fancy dance would attract a huge crowd every weekend, and they could dance all night to a big band for a shilling.

At the end of the dance on Saturday night, it was easier just to stay at the Milton’s because Shirley always had to walk Thelma home to Clark Street first, walking past her own street by a good mile or so to deliver her home. Thelma was too nervous to walk herself home alone, although it didn’t seem to occur to her to wonder what happened to Shirley once she dropped her off and headed back into the night to Griffith Street on her own. Back at home, Eileen and Bill had moved in and Eileen was pregnant. It was bedlam most nights at home, and the Milton’s lodging offered peace, calm, and half a shared double bed with Thelma in contrast to her own tiny box of a bedroom and the misery of lives deconstructing under the pall of beer and whisky. Without Fred around to remind Mrs Milton that Shirley was in danger of snatching him away, Kate treated Shirley quite kindly. Whilst no one in Richmond’s kitchen was laid on with endless supplies of food, there was a much higher chance of getting fed some morning and afternoon tea at Clark St, and Shirley learned a few cake and scone making recipes emanating from the tiny kitchen.

 

Sam, Kate and young Fred and Thelma in their horse and jinker on the farm at Silvan

Thelma’s terror of walking around the night streets of Richmond were something of a mystery to Shirley, but she learned later on that they had a very organic inception. Thelma had grown up tightly wound up in her own mother’s anxieties, rightly or wrongly springing from Kate’s experience of hard bush life bearing babies and fretting about how to feed her four children each day during a depression, all the while keeping the wolves of poverty and (more unsuccessfully) coldblooded banks at bay.  

Fred with Thelma in the pram 1927

Some eight years ago back on the farm in Silvan, when Fred was around ten years old and Thelma only eighteen months behind, Kate fell pregnant with her fifth child. Life had never managed to progress past spartan sufficiency up in the mountain where they moved when Fred was two, and the family struggled to survive and feed the children they did have after paying for the running of the farm and the loan they had taken out to purchase the property. There was little time to think about anything other than the cooking, washing, cleaning and farm work that was needing to be done, so there was little time to even register the existence of a looming new addition to mouths to feed. However, some thirty weeks into the pregnancy, Kate woke up with severe contractions and before help could be called, a tiny baby boy was born pale and unmoving. Sam took the little one the next day as soon as it got light – before the children woke – and buried him under a large tree in a grove deep enough to make sure that no one knew he was there, hoping somehow in doing so life could return to normal for his wife as soon as possible.

Fred and Thelma centre front at smoko time in the Strawberry fields at Silvan

Later that morning Kate did stop crying, but the next day when Sam returned from his work in the fields, she had stopped speaking. Sam tried as much as he could to keep the children out of her way for the next week or two, hoping that with rest she would recover. He made simple meals for everyone with the assistance of Fred and Thelma, and they helped him to get the younger ones dressed and fed before they left for school. However, when he returned home for lunch each day, he would inevitably find Kate sitting by the fire staring at the wall in the same seat and position as she had been when he and the children had left four hours earlier. She would not respond to conversation and barely ate or drunk anything. Her eyes stared fixated into the middle distance and it was as if there were no one in the room, even when it was filled with the four children and himself.

After two weeks of this, he called in on his sister-in-law Grace who lived nearby and asked her to send word to the Melbourne chapter of the family that Kate was not at all well after the loss of her pregnancy, and that she needed assistance. Bonnie arrived a few days later, distressed to find Kate barely responsive, rod thin and dishevelled. After cleaning up the cottage and putting on a stew for the family, Sam drove Bonnie and his wife to the train station back Melbourne, where Kate spent the next two months being nursed back to health. Thelma, Fred and Sam kept the family going in the meantime and they all went on with life as much as they could without their mum to keep things going. Her children, while missing her terribly, were both confused and relieved not to have to tiptoe around her stricken form sitting in front of the fire from breakfast time until bedtime every day.

The primary school the Milton children walked five miles to every morning in Monbulk

Eventually, Kate recovered and returned to Silvan and life seemed to her brood to go back to normal. Some two years later however, when they had almost paid off the block, the depression deepened so much that the laden cart full of fresh berries would leave the farm late at night and return the next day at dusk with barely a case sold. It quickly became impossible to keep up the loan repayments, and the bank began foreclosure, forcing Sam and his family into Monbulk where he worked for the next few years at whatever jobs he could find to put food on the table. Fred and Thelma left primary school and started commuting down to Swinburne College to complete Grade Seven and Eight, with Sam eventually finding a job through family as a delivery man for the Loy’s Lemonade company down in the big smoke. In 1939 the family moved to Richmond to start a new life, abandoning their shattered dreams of rural prosperity with great relief.

Ever since those hard years in Silvan and her breakdown, Kate seemed to live on high alert in life. To Kate, the world was a savage place, to be feared and fought and kept at bay by strict adherence and attention to safety and thrifty housekeeping. Thelma, as her oldest daughter, was instructed to never trust life and its grimy streets. It threatened ruin, danger and overwhelm at every turn. The towns, cities and establishments of this world were to be dreaded, the battle for shillings and bread a ceaseless threat to one’s personal safety, and the importance of a secure wage trumping all personal needs or desires.

Monbulk Primary School Fred centre front, Thelma fifth from left row three

World War II and the Australian Navy had now introduced a life-threatening element into the safety net Kate had tried to construct around her family completely outside her control, and her anxiety became a nagging ghost that no number of saved shillings on the fridge could allay.

When Sam was sent away to work for the civilian war effort, and her cherished oldest son in the Navy was at risk of being killed at war in Asia, Kate’s forbearance in accepting such a devastating alteration to her family life soon crumbled. Not long after Fred left for his naval service, Kate was unable to get out of bed one day and when Thelma called the doctor he arrived to a screaming reception in the front bedroom. Kate lay twisting the sheets in her hand and crying uncontrollably. Dr Pivott prescribed some brandy and milk of magnesium and wrote later that day to the Australian Home Defence Forces Directorate instructing them to send Mr Samuel Milton directly home to his family as there was no one to care for the two younger children while the mother was in such an unfit state. Sam returned home as quickly as he could, happy to be released from the hard physical labour, and deeply concerned that his wife appeared to be struggling again so greatly with her nerves.

Sam always had a calming effect on the house. His simple yet kind conversation helped everyone relax, and Shirley was relieved when Mr Milton was home whenever she arrived. He had a soft, warm smile and was a deft hand at carving a modest lamb roast into graceful portions that lasted for three meals. With Sam safely back in Richmond and recommencing his delivery job for Loy’s Lemonade, Kate gradually regained her equilibrium and the family moved on as best they could, happy that at least their father was there now to lend a helping hand and a soothing smile every day.