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    Between the Wars Part 1
    Between the Wars Part 1
    Between the Wars Part 1
    Ebook374 pages5 hours

    Between the Wars Part 1

    By Greg Tuck

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    About this ebook

    Mary Evans was born in 1920 in Melbourne, Australia. Her father had come home from World War 1 suffering from shell shock and the loss of his leg. When she was only seven, her father finally died. She, her mother and younger brother, David who had an intellectual disability, were cast out onto the streets.
    By sheer chance Mary spots a pickpocket at the Queen Victoria Market and gives chase. The pickpocket is arrested. The owner of the stolen wallet is so grateful that he offers Mary’s mother a job as a live-in maid. The Evans family take up residence in the Hansens’ house in Hawthorn, a well to-do suburb of Melbourne. Mary finds it palatial in comparison to sleeping in the back alleys of North Melbourne. The Hansens insist that she begin school at a nearby private girls’ school. Mary excels at school and her world becomes much more expansive. New people enter that world. The Great Depression hits just as Mary wins a scholarship. The Hansens are very community minded and determined to help those struggling. This along with the exposure to many places, ideas and people help Mary to weld together a framework of philosophy and ethics beyond her years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Tuck
    Release dateJan 25, 2019
    ISBN9780463240649
    Between the Wars Part 1
    Author

    Greg Tuck

    I am a former primary teacher and principal, landscape designer and gardener and now a full time author living in Gippsland in the state of Victoria in Australia. Although I write mainly fictional novels, I regularly contribute to political blogs and have letters regularly published in local and Victorian newspapers. I write parodies of songs and am in the process of writing music for the large number of poems that I have written.

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      Between the Wars Part 1 - Greg Tuck

      Part 1

      By Greg Tuck

      © 2019

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, photos and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Photographs are used with permission from the State Library of Victoria.

      Part 1

      Chapter 1

      I never knew my father, at least not as the real person I was told he once was. War changed him. War changes everyone and everything. But he became someone that people said was totally unrecognisable from the young man he was before. I just knew him as Dad, a man who shunned contact with the real world, who always smelled of tobacco and cheap whisky, and someone whom you walked on eggshells around. He was nothing like what my Mum described or my grandparents had written about. In those times you didn’t correct or argue with your elders and I soon learned to keep my mouth shut and mask the incredulity that I felt.

      He was born in a farm near Dimboola in Western Victoria and apparently, he nearly killed my grandmother when he was being born. Consequently, he was an only child. I had no cousins. There was just my little brother and me. Farm life was hard and financially my dad’s parents were struggling to make ends meet, so when Dad came back from overseas, he couldn’t turn to them. He couldn’t find work and you can’t live on sympathy, especially when my mother popped out two kids in three years. We were in a depression era before the real depression started. Mum’s parents were of no use. They had disowned her as soon as she went against their wishes and married Dad after only a three-week courtship. They were as poor as church mice, but had morals they had told my parents.

      He had arrived down from Dimboola after enlisting and stayed in Broadmeadows, just west of Melbourne, for initial training. Like everyone else, he had lied about his age and had no idea what he was in for. The news back from the front was never fully covered in the press and the fact that young men were being used as cannon fodder only came out afterwards. Strangely enough in 1917 when my Dad enlisted, there was still a sense of adventure and a belief that it couldn’t happen to me amongst the youth of our fledgling nation. They willingly lined up, despite the exhortations of the injured men who had returned and the sight of grieving families. Everyone knew someone who didn’t come back, someone according to the government propaganda had made the ultimate sacrifice for the mother country. It was only in my later years that I questioned why, if we were now an independent nation, as a member of the Empire, we had to send our young off to be slaughtered because of a German family’s tiff.

      (My dad’s training mates)

      Dad was still only seventeen and mum had turned eighteen when they married in the spring of 1917. If you can get away with a lie to get yourself shot, then getting married illegally because of their true ages was dead easy. They had a couple of nights together and then he was shipped off. She never saw him for over a year and by then, well by then, he was much less of a man in so many ways, yet much more of a man having lost what was left of his youth. Mum waited of course. All women did, some in vain, some like my mum, probably wished she hadn’t, when she saw the detritus that war had cast back at her in the form of her husband.

      She told me just before she died that it wasn’t the loss of the leg and the rasping of his lungs caused by mustard gas, it was the soulless look in his eyes that was so hard to take. He apparently never told her what he had witnessed and what he had done, but she overheard whispers when a couple of mates came around to talk to him. Those visits didn’t last long and soon no-one came around. She did hear him screaming at night as his nightmares heightened and memories rose to the surface. In the end it was a wonder that any children were born. He withdrew into himself and she nursed him as best she could whilst still trying to put bread on the table for both of them and their children.

      There was no way Dad was able to work. He had left the family farm and it had suffered badly. His parents were barely eking out a living and Dad and Mum would be two extra mouths to feed. Mum was a city girl and knew nothing about farming. Dad was a broken man with a missing leg. They could only contribute to the burgeoning debt of his parents. The option of soldier settlement farms was also a nonsense because, although Dad had the experience, he was both physically and mentally unfit to return to the work force, let alone run a business. Women had filled in roles in factories and businesses during the war and employers were reluctant to sack them or men who didn’t go to war; simply to honour a promise of keeping a job open to those men who went away. Many men were left desolate and numbed by such actions of betrayal. Dad had no such promises made, but he was what we now call unemployable. Mum had a stout heart, a resolute mind, but no education. She saw her role as one of nursing her husband back to health. She had no idea that his path back to health was a cul de sac. So, she cleaned people’s houses for a pittance when he slept or was drunk beyond redemption. She wasn’t good at cleaning and was constantly let go. Pride stopped her from begging on the street, but sometimes pride was locked away when rent was due and food was scarce.

      (Me)

      I was a lucky child. Lucky to be conceived, lucky to have been carried to full term as my mother’s body wasted away. People say that when you are pregnant you are eating for two. Mum had barely enough to eat for one. Whatever nutrient she could get went straight to me. My birth was difficult, but Mrs Bowden, next door, helped apparently. She had offered early on to help with an abortion, but Mum had refused. In the end her ‘medical’ skill allowed me to come into the world. If it wasn’t for the donations from a local church, mum wouldn’t have had enough food to produce milk for me. So, I guess I have God to thank for that. He would have been better off stopping the war before it started though. That would have solved many of my family’s problems. I often wondered what would have happened if God had done the right thing. But then again, Dad would have stayed in Dimboola, never met my mum and my brother and I would never have been born. So, God does move in mysterious ways. Maybe he is just a lazy dilettante who occasionally lifts a finger, or maybe he isn’t as all powerful as people make out and does what he can. Whatever it is, I don’t trust him. Never have, even to this day.

      I had two spinster great aunts on my mum’s side.

      (My great aunts)

      They were very austere women who lived together. Mum and I were shunted off to them for a month or two when Mum got sick when I was about six months. I met them again when I was seven. They were the only members of Mum’s family who came to Dad’s funeral and shortly after, Mum, David and I stayed with them as Mum tried to work out what to do next. Mum was in her mid-twenties, alone with two kids and no prospects. It was very kind I suppose of my great aunts to take us in, but I was a feisty little street urchin by then and couldn’t cope with the drawn blinds, the smell of lavender and the dark foreboding stares of what I took as contempt that came my way. I think we would have stayed there a lot longer and Mum would have not have had to throw herself on the mercy of unscrupulous landlords, if I had’ve conformed to what the beliefs of my great aunts. I was not prepared to be the prissy little girl that they insisted upon. In the end Mum decided for us. We left and, with my younger brother in tow and our meagre belongings in a tattered suitcase, we started a new life.

      Chapter 2

      I remember at the time thinking that Mum could have chosen a better night to leave. Drizzly rain and nowhere to go. We slept in the alcove on the porch of a church in North Melbourne, wrapped in the excess clothes we carried. The door was locked shut and David cried because he was hungry and wet and cold. Mum and I just sat and shivered. She refused to go to sleep and I was trying my best to emulate her stoic attitude. I wasn’t about to cry. I wasn’t about to let the darkness claim me. I woke up however stiff and sore in the morning to find that the rain had ceased, but the leaden skies above still threatening to unleash another soaking. David had snot running down his nose and he kept wiping it on the sleeve of his grubby damp shirt. He seemed a bit chirpier that morning. Perhaps he sensed that whinging and whining were a waste of time. We had no food, but the gentle southerly breeze brought in the exotic smells of the nearby Queen Victoria Market. So, maybe he was optimistic.

      I had no idea at the time why we left my great aunts in such a hurry. I only found out much later. They were far and above the wealthiest people I had met in my short life. They had wanted to dress David and me up in finery and that seemed okay to me. Mum was reluctant to let them and insisted that she would supply clothes for her children. How she was going to do that was beyond not only my seven-year-old brain’s capacity to work out, but well beyond our finances. We had always had difficulty with money as far as I can remember. While Dad was alive, we were on a pension, but much of what was left over after the rent was paid was spent on whisky and cigarettes. That was Dad’s medicine. In later years I came to recognise that was his way of coping and Mum’s way of keeping him less melancholy and not letting insanity overwhelm him. Once Dad died, the pension dried up. We couldn’t pay the rent and found ourselves on the street and ultimately at our great aunts.

      These aunts were businesswomen of the highest order in the lowest of professions. They ran three brothels between North Melbourne and the Docks. As Melbourne grew and the ships plied their trade, so did these two women. They had a continual flow of customers that constantly changed. With the loss of a nearly a whole generation of men due to the war, many women found themselves unable to snare a husband to support them and so my aunts also had a ready supply of workers in the brothels, women willing to do almost anything to make a crust. They had lured their niece in with the hope she may also seek employment with them. Mum refused point blank, but was cajoled to remain in the house because she was ‘family’. Little did she know that her aunts had their eyes set on other things. She was totally unaware of some of the fetishes of men and her aunts’ determination to meet those needs. All hell broke loose when she discovered that her own children were intended to be offered as sex toys to the most deviant of characters that frequented their establishments. In hindsight I shouldn’t have been so critical of my mother for dragging us out into foaming froth of humanity that was Melbourne’s poor in the mid 1920’s.

      One of the best things about my little brother was his eyes.

      (David)

      His birth had been difficult and as Mum once described him, he wasn’t all there. I learnt later he had been starved of some oxygen and that had affected his brain. His eyes though were alert and took in everything. He didn’t process a lot really, but the littlest things excited him. Some people shied away from him, however David took it all in his stride. He didn’t worry about other people’s attitudes, as long as he was fed, was warm, had either Mum or I near him and there were things to see; he was probably the happiest kid on the planet. We walked down to the Vic Market that morning, hoping to get some scraps of fruit and vegies that might have been cast aside as they were not worth selling. I guess we were vegans by default. Only the rich ate meat and eggs, and the latter were too hard to come by unless you jumped a fence and raided someone’s chook pen.

      David was oblivious to all the vagaries of cordon bleu food. He took what he was given and ate it with gusto. As Mum and I searched the throw out pile behind the stalls, David’s huge puppy dog eyes must have caught the attention of one of the stallholders. The man beckoned David over, but David shook his head. He was very wary of strangers and remained very still glancing sideways to make sure we were close nearby. The man wandered over and David began to quake in his boots, well if he had boots, he would have. His feet, like both Mum’s and mine were clad in ill-fitting, shoes that someone had given us. They absorbed water through numerous holes and there was no sign of any polish to be seen on them. The man held out a strange yellowy orange piece of fruit to my brother. David’s eyes lit up, this time not from fear, but because his brain had taken in the fact that what was being offered was something new and may have been food.

      My mother rushed to stand between David and the man who suddenly halted. We don’t need no charity mister! she snarled.

      I wasn’t offering charity missus, came the reply, I’ve got some fruit here that is about to go off and no-one wants it. A friend brought some down from northern New South Wales and suggested I sell them on my stall in the market here. No-one even wants to try them. I wondered whether your boy would like to try one and if he likes it, if you don’t mind, I’d like him to stand in front of my stall eating it. I reckon if he tried it, he’d love it and people would get the message. You can stand with him and make sure he’s okay. I reckon that his big eyes and smile could sell anything.

      It won’t make him sick or nothin’, will it? Mum asked.

      The stall holder just laughed. I reckon missus that if he tries one, he won’t ever get sick of eating them. Perhaps you and your daughter can taste test too.

      You ain’t feeling sorry for us, are you? Mum was really suspicious of anyone’s motives those days.

      I just want to sell these pieces of fruit before they go off and I lose me money. They’re called mangoes by the way. He took the fruit and expertly cut it in half and then sliced lines in each piece before turning it inside out. He cut off a small cube and proffered it to Mum on the side of his knife. She looked at David who was beginning to drool, then she placed the cube in her mouth. The look on her face is one that I still remember to this very day. It began as a sour look of apprehension that quickly turned into one of delight. I think I saw her smile for the first time in years that day. The man sliced off another cube and after receiving a nod of approval gave one to David and then did the same for me. David usually had a grin on his face most of the time. He didn’t have a big grasp of the world, but the world for him was usually a good place. That day he left the planet and ascended to heaven. I nearly joined him. Never in my whole life had I tasted anything as fresh and juicy and sweet at the same time. Fruit was a luxury item for us, but this fruit was I was sure a super luxury item for all the well to do people. We gobbled up the remaining cubes between the three of us.

      So, would you let your son help me out, missus?

      Mum didn’t hesitate. If she had, David would have kicked and screamed and the tantrum would have gone on for hours. David’s first ever job was marketing for a fruit stall holder and he did such a good job that most of the mangoes were sold and we walked away with a box of fruit for ourselves. We had nowhere to stay but our bellies would be full. We trudged back wearily and spent the rest of the day huddling near the stand under construction at the North Melbourne Football ground. Mum had managed to find some newspaper and used the old fruit box our ‘winnings’ came in, to start a small fire. It gave off a little heat, didn’t dry our clothes much, but the inner warmth it helped create was magical. Mum managed to hang our clothes out on a rail in an attempt to dry them. David loved running around naked but Mum insisted that I keep a slip on ‘just in case’. It wasn’t a great start to our new life, however beggars, and we were really beggars, can’t be choosers as Mum would often say in the years to come.

      Chapter 3

      The next few months were a blur. I don’t know how we survived. I guess the Vic Market stallholders helped us a lot. We lived in doorways, washed under taps, and the public toilets, though not brilliantly clean, were a godsend. Everywhere we went, we had to lug mum’s suitcase. Her treasures, apart from us, she assured us, were kept in there. It was not very full so we weren’t laden down with riches. We were lucky to have a change of clothes; there were Dad’s medals which mum refused to pawn and some letters that Dad had written to Mum when he was overseas. I didn’t know, until Mum showed them to me, that Dad could read and write. Mum couldn’t read and a kind neighbour had read them to her once and Mum would recite them silently probably word for word as she stared at the scrawled markings on the page. Mum, as was the case with so many women of her era, suffered the ignominy of illiteracy. Women were to be seen and not heard. They were there solely to look after the menfolk, cook, clean, bear and raise children. They didn’t need an education back then. Despite the Education Act coming in nearly thirty years before she was born, Mum was caught up in the historical culture and her schooling wasn’t deemed necessary despite it being compulsory.

      David’s and my education seemed headed that way too. David was deemed special and wasn’t going to be accepted into the normal school system. Early on pressure was brought to bear on Mum to have David institutionalised and cared for. Mum wasn’t going to have a bar of that and even Dad backed Mum to the hilt on that. It was one of the few times that I saw him leave his room in an animated fashion. David was about two and somehow word had got out that he wasn’t normal. A government official turned up and threatened to take David away. I swear if Dad had a gun, there would have been one less bureaucrat in the world.

      It was that fear of losing David and possibly me, and Mum’s poor education, that saw us out on the street in the first place, I found out years later. Mum was entitled to some sort of pension after Dad died. She was then the widow of a war veteran and the government was supposed to assist her. Somewhere in an office someplace, a mistake was made and when Dad died his pension and the pension for his family had a red line put through it. If Mum had’ve known her rights we could have stayed where we were. A neighbour told her pretty much the same thing, but Mum wasn’t about to make a fuss because the man might come back and take her David away and maybe me. She had already lost Dad and couldn’t bear the thought of losing anyone else.

      At night she would tell us stories and explain things as best she could. I always had a myriad of questions and David always asked her ‘why?’ about anything and everything. He didn’t really want to know the answer and probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway. He just loved hearing her speak to him. She didn’t mind and was so patient with him and their bond was immensely strong. She was less forthcoming with me however. I was more interested in people and emotions rather than things. Her answers didn’t really answer the burning need in me to understand more about life and sometimes I would become so frustrated that she would just end the conversation with the words, That’s just the way it is, Mary, get used to it. I learnt that was her polite way of her telling me to shut up.

      Because we were constantly on the move after Dad died, our place of residence could be best described as Number one, No Fixed Address Street. My first two years of schooling ended abruptly. It didn’t resume for nearly a year. That didn’t mean I didn’t learn anything during that missing time. I figured I learnt more about life than most kids my age. Though I knew my alphabet and could spell some words and read a little, I had nothing to practice it on and if someone asked me to read a street sign, they would get some ‘Maryspeak’ version based on what the letters in it sounded like. However, if they asked me to take them to a specific place anywhere in the north western part of the Melbourne, they would get there unerringly in the shortest possible time. I knew where all the toilets were, where some people were offering free food, and the places to avoid especially after dark. I knew what money was and how to sort it and count it accurately. That became a trick I would perform for the stallholders. They didn’t believe a begrimed little waif of a girl could do it; and often we were blessed with a reward of a piece of fruit or a vegetable for putting on a show for their customers. David was the drawcard with his beaming smile luring customers in and I would round the show out with my magic counting. Mum hovered in the background, grateful to the men who worked the market, for helping us out and making life a little less tragic for David and me.

      (Workers at the Queen Victoria Market)

      I drew the attention of the police one day and Mum became very frightened. As usual in the market, people came with money and left with goods. We had no money but left with goods, so I guess we were a rare breed. However, there were some crafty people who came with nothing and left with money. The market was a bustling affair and the walkways between the stalls were narrow. This served the pickpockets, who made a living there, quite well. I had no concept that such a thing took place. I had been raised to be scrupulously honest and if I saw someone drop something, be it a coin or something else they carried, I would race after them and hand it back. Sometimes I would be offered a reward, but I refused to accept it. I think in hindsight, it would have been wiser to take it as it would have made life a bit easier for us. But I didn’t. Mum had drummed into us that we should never take anything from strangers and that you had to work hard to get something. Simply giving something back to someone because they had dropped it wasn’t work. It was just the right thing to do.

      While doing my counting for a small group of people I noticed a young man bump into an older man and his wife. The young man apologised and quickly moved on, but not before I yelled out in my loudest voice, Hey that’s not yours. Give it back. I pointed my finger at him and he raced off. The older man felt his pocket and realised that his wallet was missing. He left his wife and went off in pursuit. Other men followed him. I didn’t see what happened next, but was told afterwards that the young man made it to the end of the row and then, as he looked over his shoulder to see who was after him, he bumped into a policeman who had heard the ruckus and was going to investigate. The young man was summarily marched back in the direction that the older man and his followers were coming from. The policeman listened to both of their accounts and then searched the young man and found a wallet that didn’t belong to him. Everyone was brought back to where David and I were and I was asked to explain what I had seen. I simply told the truth much to the annoyance of the young man.

      Is your mother or father here? the police officer asked.

      I pointed to where my mum was and she timidly came forward.

      You’ve got a smart young lady here, madam. I should be asking why she isn’t in school at the moment, but if she had’ve been, this man might have got away with his crime. See to it she gets back to school soon.

      Mum nodded nervously and the policeman turned to the young man and said, Right. I think this gentleman should have his wallet back and you should have some time at the police station to think about things.

      I didn’t appreciate the look that I received from the would-be pickpocket so I stuck my tongue out. My mum slapped me on the wrists, but the corners of her mouth crinkled upwards.

      The gentleman who had his wallet returned was so pleased he was at a loss as to what to do. His wife certainly knew however. She took his wallet and opened it up and I saw more than one piece of paper money in the one place for the first time. She grabbed hold of a pound note and handed it to Mum. Mum refused to accept it and this shocked the lady. However, Mum explained that her children and she needed no charity, nor reward for just doing the right thing. Mum was as stubborn a person as I’ve ever met and despite the fact that we were penniless, her pride outweighed all the gold in the world. The older woman just wouldn’t let it go though and kept on insisting. It was a battle of wills, but Mum never gave in on any battle she fought. She didn’t lose this one, though in the end a compromise was agreed upon.

      If you will come and work for me as a live-in maid, then would you accept a week’s wages in advance? the lady proposed.

      Mum thought about it long and hard and asked if there was room for her two children as well. The lady just smiled and said that of course there was room and she wasn’t the sort of person to split up a family. Mum seemed quite abashed for even thinking that the lady would even contemplate such a thing. However, Mum insisted that she would only accept money for the work that had been done. This again seemed to stun the lady, but she agreed. By the end of the day, suitcase in hand, we crossed the river for the first time in my life and moved into a house on the hill in a part of Melbourne I was soon to become familiar with, Hawthorn.

      (Hawthorn, a suburb east of Melbourne)

      Chapter 4

      We trudged up the driveway to the imposing brick building and stood in the portico at the front door. I had never seen anything as grand as this house; the gardens were like manicured parkland; flowers of all description were out in bloom in the warming early spring late afternoon sun. They were a mass of colours of plants that I had never seen before. It looked like someone had spilled paint all over the place in beautiful shapes. I was to learn later that lilies, daffodils and all sorts of bulbs came out at this time of year and Mrs Hansen had directed that they be planted amongst the array of roses to provide colour until the roses bloomed. Exotic azaleas and rhododendrons were on the shady side of the

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