cigarette papers in his shaving cabinet for when he nicked his skin when he shaved. I dried my hands and grabbed the papers and placed one over the cut. I might as well not have bothered because no sooner had I placed it on the cut, the paper was a red sodden mess.
I tried again and again and by this time my hands were dripping with perspiration as I desperately tried to stem the blood flow. I managed to wrap a small gauze bandage around it dried myself and got dressed. I limped out to Edith and told her a story that I had climbed through a barbed wire fence earlier in the day whilst trying to pat a horse and the bath water had knocked the scab off the wound. I was rushed to the doctor and was given a tetanus needle because horses and barbed wire fences were a lethal combination for tetanus.
Serves me right, I had outsmarted myself once again.
The following August, Edward and I went to the Brisbane Exhibition (known by Queenslanders as ‘The Ekka’) on the last Saturday to buy heaps of sugar cane from the fruit pavilion. The farmers sold their fruit and vegetable displays to the public very cheaply and the giant stalks of sugar cane were broken into approximately two-foot lengths. I sat on the front steps attacking one piece of the juicy cane trying to take the skin off but to no avail. I went under the house in search of one of my grandfather’s gardening implements and discovered his machete.
Back up onto the steps, I very gingerly gave the sugarcane a couple of whacks but the cane kept rolling around as soon as I hit it. I held the cane in my left hand and gave it a bit of a tap and I managed to split the skin slightly. I sucked at the juice and it was sheer bliss tasting that sweet nectar. I was spurred on to give the piece of cane a harder whack. This time I lifted the machete higher and plunged it down harder, it broke the skin all right unfortunately it was the skin on my hand.
You’d be correct if you guessed that it was the little finger of my left hand. Once again, I was extremely lucky the machete wasn’t very sharp but it mangled my finger almost in the same place that the crab had crunched. I was beginning to get the feeling God was trying to tell me something and I made a momentous decision that the third time would be unlucky and I decided to be more careful in the future.
One night about two weeks before Guy Fawkes Night in 1956, with Edith’s permission, I went for a walk with Hannah over to the shops near the railway station in search of crackers. By the time we got there, the shop that sold them was closed. We walked all the way back to the shops near the local picture theatre to see if any of the shops there were still open. We bought quite a few for the money we had and we walked up the hill towards our homes. As we walked over the crest of the hill, I noticed a pale green F. J. Holden it was the same make and model as my father’s car. Very casually Hannah said, ‘There’s your father’s car across the road.’ By this time, we had walked past it and I looked back and said, ‘No, it’s not Dad’s car but it’s like it though, isn’t it?’‘It is your father’s car.’ Hannah insisted. We kept walking and we got to the bottom of the hill and around the corner. The next thing a car came screaming around the corner practically on two wheels and came to a screeching stop. The door flew open
Dad ‘You, get in the car.
I was shocked
Amelia ‘Can Hannah come too?’
Without even looking at her,
Dad ‘Get in.’
We practically flew down the street around the corner and up our street in deathly silence except for the roar of the car’s motor. Hannah ran to her house and Dad hurried me up the stairs. Edith came out to see what the commotion was
Dad yelled, ‘I found her wandering the bloody streets.’
He looked at his watch
Dad ‘It’s twenty to ten she should’ve been in bed hours ago.’
Edith went to say something and he interrupted her and said, ‘I’m going out, I’ll see you about her later.’
With that he turned and took off in a flurry and flew down the street in the car and disappeared around the corner. I was expecting Edith to go off the brain at me. Instead she very calmly listened to my explanation. I think I must’ve gone over the exact events of the evening about ten times. I gave her the exact location where I thought I saw Dad’s car and she queried over and over about Hannah insisting that it was Dad’s car. The following night Edith got dressed in an olive-green blouse and black skirt and flat-heeled shoes. Aunty Lilly turned up in similar dark clothing and they both left with torches in their hands. They arrived back about an hour or so later. They had gone past the house and Dad’s car was parked in the side street. Edith had crept up alongside and as she got closer, she could see two people sitting in the car. She shone the torch through the open window and saw an olive-skinned woman with dark hair pulled off her face as if she wore it in a bun at the back of her head. According to Edith she had a long beak of a nose. Apparently, Dad said to the woman something that sounded like, ‘Wind the window up, lambie.’
Edith ‘What right have you got, to take a man away from his wife and children?
The woman ‘It depends on the age of the children.’
I forget what else was said, but Aunty Lilly and Edith didn’t stay there very long and they came straight back home. Uncle Simon told us later that the affair had gone on for nearly ten years. This meant that I was only two when he started going out with her. None of us wanted to have anything to do with him, as far as we were all concerned, he was already finished. James and Edward wanted to kill him. Edith had been humiliated in the worst possible way and she didn’t deserve that at all. She’d been a good wife and mother all those years and he had treated her with utter contempt. To make matters worse only a few months before, he had told Mum and Granddad that they had to leave the house and find their own place to live and that had shattered me. They had lived with us since before the war and I felt as if my world was being torn apart when they left. They moved into a flat about five minutes walking distance from our house, but it wasn’t the same. I had pleaded with them to take me with them, but I wasn’t allowed to go. Three months later they bought a house, they had only been there two weeks when the flat that they’d occupied burnt to the ground from an electrical fault.
I continued going to school for another twelve months and Edith had to find a job to support us all. She hadn’t gone to work for an employer for more than twenty years. She had no skills and no formal education but she took what employment she could find. She got a job as a milk bar attendant in Chemist Roush’ soda fountain parlour, at the top of Queen Street, Brisbane. That suited me down to the ground, I loved lime sodas and strawberry malted milks and I’d go into town to see her at work as often as I could.
Years later on 60 Minutes there was a story about a heroic nurse who had served in Egypt during WW11, she had a similar sounding name to the woman Dad had had the affair with. I’ll go to my grave believing that she was Dad’s girlfriend.
Edith had often said to me, when I’d been particularly cheeky or naughty, ‘You’re in for a rude awakening one of these days, young lady.’ I’d been sleeping in her bed and I awoke one morning to see her standing in the bedroom with only her panties on. She was bent over putting her bra on and her breasts were swinging like pendulums. I bit my tongue as the thought went through my mind, this must be the rude awakening she’s been talking about for years.
As Dad wasn’t around, I figured my chances of getting a belting was fairly high, if I’d said it to her. So, I kept my mouth shut just for once in my life.
Chapter 9
A Fate Worse Than Death
I was very reluctant to leave Sister Mary St Angela’s class, but I had to move on. I figured that each nun had shown me kindness so the new nun who had replaced Sister Mary Marietta (the one I had feared) would be a pushover. Sister Mary Marietta was a really cranky, red-cheeked woman but quite attractive really. All the kids called her the painted doll (behind her back of course) because her cheeks looked as if she always applied rouge. She used to be in charge of sports