place and marched out to his Ford tourer. He smiled at me. 'Have I told you about Bella, old son? Me new missus? Well, she's not too shook on babies.' He patted my cheek and winked. 'Might be able to talk her round but you'll have to grow a bit first.'
My father opened the car door and propelled me into Bella's unwelcoming arms. Despite her entrancing aroma, I longed for Martha's scratchy bosom and the smell of Sunlight soap. Sam could not fail to notice the stiffness of her posture, her arms barely encircling me. 'For God's sake, darlin', he's not goin' to bloody well bite you. Hold onto him, we're only going to Ashfield.' And he flung himself behind the steering wheel and drove far too quickly down the gloomy Scarba driveway.
...2...
Lost years? Unable to account for the passing of time? Like the young Cavalier Prince being grilled by the Roundheads, 'When did you last see your father?', I saw very little of mine. I saw very little of anybody during my confinement in the meandering, mock-manor-house spread of the Ashfield Infants' Home. The philanthropist who had helped generously towards the purchase of 'Gorton' in the 1870s watched my growth from his ornate gilt frame in the dining room. In reality, his ice-blue eyes were on the horizon of his sizeable estate, not on some Jewish infant kept out of trouble for a quid a week. These are the things I remember: the benefactor's blue eyes, the carved newel posts of the staircase where my pudgy fingers traced the leaves of the waratah, the drying room because of its dank smell, the reek of roast lamb on a Sunday every Sunday as weeks and months became time without end or interruption to a life circumscribed by the bars of my cot. Except, except . . .
One Sunday, many months after Sam deposited me in the Ashfield home, my maternal grandmother was pushed up the driveway in a wheelchair by Alf, her son-in-law the Gallipoli veteran, too shattered by the gas of Flanders to do any sustained work and thus on call to his mainlaw and sisters for odd jobs such as the rare visits to an unclaimed child. I was now fleet enough to be able to run anywhere other than where directed. My health card was gratifyingly free of those ailments so contagious and rife when thirty infants are in nursery propinquity. Grandma had been propped in the common room. From a distant doorway, urged forward by a nurse I detested, I saw this black mass peering at me through pince-nez and then a blackgloved hand beckoning me. The nurse shoved me in the back.
'Gwan, go and meetcha granny.'
Halfway towards her and the purple mole on her cheek with hair sprouting from it was enough to propel my stubby legs into a gallop, past her and out the door she had come through. The girl did not give chase; she had seen it all before. Alf stuck out a feeble arm but by then I was free, free and stumbling down the steps and heading for the noise of the Parramatta Road traffic. It was the gardener who grabbed me a few yards from the iron gates. His giant, earth-stained hands were imprinted on my spotless Sunday clothes. He tucked me under his arm like his bags of blood and bone fertiliser, which now shared its pungency with me. He dumped me just inside the doors where the wheezing Alf duly took over and presented me to Grandma.
'Just what y'd expect from Sam's kid.' And with an exhausting heave, he plopped me in Grandma's lap.
Grandma Davis was of that era when widowhood seemed to come early and stay around for an eternity. She was in her mid-fifties when I was born but had lain in a cold bed for the past twenty-five years. Her three daughters were raised on the payout of a life insurance policy which even now allowed her to live at least up to a similar standard to her Jewish neighbours. She arrived by taxi to inspect me, the first of only three such occasions while I was resident at the Ashfield Infants' Home, in a period of nearly three years.
You may have noticed that I was a very olfactory child. Go back over the events I have so far related and you will see how, from my earliest days, this sense was the one that received messages and triggered responses above all others. My father: bay rum on his skin; Mrs O'Donohue: congealed breast milk; Martha: Sunlight soap; Matron McCechnie: carbolic; Bella: a perfume that sent my little mind reeling. And now the nameless gardener's blood and bone permeated my Sunday clothing, for which I was grateful, as it so repulsed Grandma with her purple hairy mole that she almost managed to stand upright in her chair in an effort to rid herself of this noxious infant, grandchild or not.
The nurse retrieved me. Alf eased Grandma back in her chair; the notsoold lady took a vial of smelling salts from her bag, wafted it under her nose and in doing so released enough of it to reach me and partially subdue the blood and bone. She now had her own identifiable smell, which was not unlike that which emanated from the dirty sheet bundles in the Ashfield Infants' Home laundry room. When the smelling salts restored Grandma enough to have the nurse once more deposit me on her sable-clothed arthritic knees, she developed a to-and-fro rocking motion, at the same time crooning, 'Poor Alva, oh, poor Alva.' I began to feel quite nauseous and my little arms flailed about seeking freedom. Just as I was about to achieve this, which would have meant falling onto the paper-thin carpet, gallant ex-private Alf grabbed me and swung me up onto his shoulder as he had once done with his army kitbag. 'Whoa there, young shaver,' he wheezed from his gas-attacked lungs. 'Y' nearly flattened me poor old ma-in-law!'
A good man, uncle Alf. A man I took to. He could have been a real fullquid father to me, had my own not been the criminally stupid, vain, irresponsible bastard that he was. Married to Beryl, Alf Safran provided on his meagre army pension and part-time work as a bookkeeper. Alf was at this time the father of two boys only a year or so older than I was. He and Beryl had begged Sam to give them the care of the newborn child to raise with their own. Why did he refuse? Was it to 'snout' Grandma Davis, a mother-in-law who saw him as the epitome of everything she had heard and willingly believed about the alleged lurid ways of commercial travellers? She had read the riot act to 26-year-old Alva for keeping company with Sampson Collins, 40-something and divorced after only two years. His marriage to my mother was recorded in the ledgers of the Great Synagogue, Elizabeth Street, Sydney, in October 1927.
The next entry in that synagogue's ledger for Alva Collins was that of her death (and my birth) on 24 September 1928.
Alf set me on my feet. I explored the spokes of the wheelchair while Grandma's gloved hand patted my head. 'He's handsome enough,' she conceded. 'I suppose it's only to be expected - the mamzer was a looker in his flash way.' She led me around gently to the front of the wheelchair, fished in her bag and came up with a pink musk sweetie. Another new smell for me to store up. 'You can see poor dear Alva in him though, can't you Alf ?'
'I know what I'd like to do, Ma,' he wheezed. 'I'd like to take the young'un home with me right here and now. I know Sam is payin' for him here. Well, I wouldn't expect anything but if he offered, well, that's a different matter.'
'I've begged him, so has Enid, so has Beryl. I just don't understand how he can refuse - how he can keep the child in these places when he could . . .' She found a hanky and wiped her eyes. 'Take me home, Alf, and you can forget about little Alan. God knows where he'll finish up.' I think that might have been the first time I had ever heard Grandma use my name. Straight away I felt a spark of kinship with the black- clad woman with the purple hairy mole. I stood in front of her and held up my arms to her. The girl who had come to take me back to the nursery saw the gesture and lifted me up once more onto Grandma's lap. Her body softened and even through the layered clothing I could feel warmth and perhaps love. She hugged me as close as her arthritic condition permitted, kissed me, left powder on my jacket and rewarded my newfound acceptance with another sweet, a peppermint. Alf lifted me down and the waiting girl took my hand, instructing it to wave goodbye as the wheelchair headed for the door and out into freedom where the acrid scent of blood and bone hung suspended over the Ashfield Infants'Home. This scene, with minor variations, occurred twice more until I reached the age of three and a half, by which time my father and the sweetsmelling Bella had parted company. In those days of elementary contraception, it is little short of a miracle that Bella did not fall pregnant in a two-year association with the fecund Sampson Collins. Her powder-puff aura, like the halo of a Christian saint, fleeting though it was, stayed with me for a very long time, helping me through the darker hours of growing up.
.... ....
Soon after, I found myself in yet another home, only this one was that of very distant relatives of Sam's, Harry and Cissy Cohen. The relationship was tenuous, held together by their son-in-law whom my father supplied