short story- a most remarkable young woman

artwork by Ruby Tuesday

In a small white cottage in Launceston Tasmania, a woman called Mary Henry conducted a nursing home for birthing mothers. Business was a little slack as the Second World War has taken most of the available sperm bank away to fight on the beaches and to be human fodder for the superior young blue bloods of the British army.

A small woman in her forties was expecting her-third child. She had some difficulty in facing reality - let alone the reality of childbirth pain. A new wonder drug called 'twilight zone' gave her several dreamy days of non-reality in which the pain was separate from her body. Mary Henry was particularly kind during this time. On the Thursday the small woman gave birth to a surprisingly healthy female child who was remarkably alert and vigorous. She was named after the kind woman 'who had brought her into the world'.

Within six months the child could fetch toys and other interesting objects from hidden places and defy order. It has been said that by this age she could flirt with any male within cooee and win their hearts. Her elderly parents employed a woman to take care of her and to manage the child's ferocious questioning and demands.

This child has some very early memories that are not supported by photographs or family memorabilia. The very first memories are of nightmares that crashed around the small head during sleep. She would stand, hanging onto her father's legs as he listened via short wave radio to the war reports. These reports were broadcast from England and would be very late at night. No one seemed to be aware of the lateness or impact on a small head filled with abstract thought.

The only visual stimulus to guide these thoughts were the Red Cross posters requesting support for war victims, one larger than life poster with two children clutching each other, one with crutches and a missing leg. The Government also pasted posters in public places inviting all able-bodied men to fight for the king and country.

Brave and blond is how she remembers them. Tall and tanned and proud in their new khaki uniforms. Proud to be Australian. They would lean out of the railway carriage as they left the local railway station, waving to mothers,wives and sweethearts who were crying. And the rest of the town would be singing wish me luck as you wave me goodbye without realising that the words needed meaning.

All through the nights the child would thrash against the dreams of German soldiers firing at her bed from a net hammock that stretched right across the bedroom ceiling.The bedroom was large, with high ceilings and a large box bay window with smaller lead-light windows at the top that stayed open all night. As the shotgun pellets hit the thin grey blankets small holes began to smoulder, threatening the child with fire. The night screaming continued for years. And fear of the dark, of sleep, of men, of the war, of being alone, stayed with the child for a long, long time.

From the high white bed, with horsehair mattresses to improve posture and prevent asthma attacks, she slipped her feet to the floor. Tiptoe, tiptoe, heart pounding, she would finally reach the bedroom door that led to the hallways in the large spreading house. The cold brass door knob sometimes defeated her and she would race back to bed, to shiver until the first stirrings of the house meant her father was awake.

Sometimes the fear was black inside her. She would wrench the door open and race across the miles of polished tiles, through the large wooden arch of the entrance hall to crash against the large warm comfortable bed of her parents. The voice had to be found as it often got lost in the fear inside her body and come out in short and silent gasps. She would ask in a whisper for a glass of water. On rare occasions her father would get out of his comfort and pour a glass of water from the squat yellow jug beside his bed, then take her back to her bed. When her voice could not be found she struggled back across the tiles to shiver in the cold white bed until the first grey light.

When the house began to stir she climbed down and followed her father as he set the fire in the range and then prepared the traditional pot of Scottish porridge for breakfast. She can remember the loud farts that hit the cold stillness and wondered at grown ups capacity to defy good manners. The mother had a habit of hiding behind good manners. Proper names for things were hidden in words like 'poofters' and 'what nots' and ‘pottygens’. These got the child into many difficulties. When she went to kindergarten she discovered that ‘whatnots’ were actually called 'your privates' and 'breaking wind' was something rude. Flying down the lane, flailing her arms against a stiff easterly sea breeze. Was that breaking wind? The child asked the woman who looked after her.

One childhood dream was calm and beautiful. Living under the sea with fluid movement and fluid colour. A dream that went on forever. The vision is quite clear to her more than fifty years later.

When she was just two she had an ongoing argument with the woman who cared for her about using the potty. In the days of lavatories down the garden, or at least down at the end of the back verandah, potties were not used just to toilet train children. Everyone but everyone had a chamber pot under the bed for nighttime relief. Ladies and gentlemen had beautiful china ones with delicate blooms painted across the curves. Children had white china ones and poor people used enamel ones or buckets. In the days before plastics. Squatting on these required the expertise of the acrobat, which is why some people had commodes. Chairs with a chamber pot under the seat. When Granny made the sign you slid her knickers round her knees, lifted the lid and sat her back down. The child had a cold white china pot under the cold white bed. The father sat the sleepy child on the pot and went sssssssss each night until he was satisfied. Dry beds by two was arbitrary. This was the way they did things in 1943.

After breakfast in 1943 children across Australia were sat on their potties while they listened to kindergarten of the air. This is what the argument was about. The lavatory at the large spreading house was down the garden path behind a rambling fuchsia and honeysuckle vine. It had a warm wooden seat and the timber walls were always freshly limed. The cat called Ginger rubbed his scents around the door hinges. Toilet paper during the war came in two varieties – huge loose rolls of white crinkled paper or small tight rolls of shiny brown paper.

In the kitchen the woman who cared for the child would turn on the wireless to kindergarten of the air, place the small china pot on the kitchen floor and the child would go rigid and scream. Finally the father intervened after a number of days and a small blue stool was made for the lavatory down the garden and the child could go when she pleased, even in the dark with her brother holding the candle. Less pleased was the woman in charge of the child.

A similar scene in another place. The child was three and very early one winter morning the family trailed up the empty dark streets of the town to the deserted railway station with suitcases balanced on the pram holding the latest baby. The train left the station at 6 30 am and reached the city where the aunt lived in the late afternoon. The large sunroom of the aunt's house filled with family and relatives and suitcases and crying children.

The aunt who loved children produced the bright enamel pot. The weary child was scruffed by the aunt and unceremoniously placed on the potty. Rigid with indignation and screaming in front of the family, relatives and the ancient grandmother.. And a brother who sniggered.

Other holidays followed with the aunt. And her dotty sister who lived down the yard in the converted garage. Dancing with the dotty aunt in the millions of pink petals falling from the huge flowering cherry tree. Playing my latest tune on the piano. A blue ceramic Vegemite jar that she scraped the Vegemite into for years because no one else I knew had a blue vegie jar. The smell of toast in an electric toaster at breakfast time. The small ancient grandmother in the side bedroom who smelt of cups of tea and talcum powder and the rattle of her cup in its saucer when she brought it out to the kitchen after breakfast.

On sunny days the father took the child for long walks down the' zigzag', a sandy track along the river. In the summer they hunted for ripe cranberries and blackberries which they ate and did not take home. When they extended the aerodrome during the war she lay on her back in the soft warm grass and copied her first letters onto paper, the letters that were printed large and black on the underwings of the landing planes. Letters that did not make words or sentences.

Measles spread all over her body the spring she was nearly four and after days of barley water and darkened rooms she was placed in a chair on the verandah in the weak sunshine for fresh air. Shock ran through her body when her legs failed to support her and she staggered and collapsed into darkness. And the woman who cared for her growling and putting her back in the darkened room to 'learn your lesson'.

The child was three. Was this was the first lesson?

The day the small Japanese plane flew across the sky fear threatened to burst the small bony chest of the child. When the child was four and a half the war ended. The war to end all wars. The end of the black out curtains. Underground shelters became favourite play houses or wine cellars.

The day the war ended all the bells rang and rang and rang. The bells in the Catholic Church at the top of the town competed with the bells in the Church of England tower at the bottom of the town. People lined the main street as the councillors handed out small silk English flags and brown paper bags of hard brown sweets. A bonfire was built up near the railway station and the hugeness and heat of the flames and the colours and noise of the fireworks burnt pictures in the child's small complicated head.

Peace meant a lot of things. It meant more sunshine and mothers who embroidered and arranged flowers and fathers who dashed off each evening to important peace meetings.It meant that the young men who returned alive from the war were barbaric. It meant their cat ran away because they were cruel to it. It was also afternoon teas with ladies, cucumber sandwiches, ration books and a new voile dress with a wide butterfly bow. A general easing of the worry.

The other children in the lane built a raft with stolen wood from the fish factory. The grown ups turned a blind eye. It was lashed together and drums were attached to make it float. The launching was quite exciting as they pushed it out into the broad bend of the creek by the hospital. The child was four and determined to be included. The overcrowded raft sank midstream midst laughter and the child panicked against the quick current. Struggling with fear to the muddy banks, finding her feet. Struggling back to the house to seek comfort.

The summer of 1946 the local newspaper conducted swimming lessons for children on the river. The children went down to the wharves and an old fisherman rowed them across to the bank where there was shallow water. The child had just recovered from chicken pox, scars still healing, but armed with a signed piece of paper turned up with the other children. The grown ups heaved and sighed but let her swim in the shallows. Come testing day the child tugged and teased the legs of the grown ups who were standing in the river with tapes between them to measure how far children could swim.

Finally one grown up let the child try and swim between the tapes. Twenty-five yards. The child dog paddled every inch and the distracted adults were disbelieving when the child panting and weak demanded recognition. On the day they handed out certificates the child got hers last, the youngest child in the campaign, the biggest pest.

The printed article about the child and the swimming campaign in the local newspaper became more important than the time before Christmas when she had her poem printed in the paper, a poem about the baby Jesus.The mother had sent it to the Editor. She was sent a book prize for the poem signed by an important lady. The prize was, called "Little Words from God', small moral verses" with a beautiful red cord through the binder.

This was the summer she started school, a bit early some of the father's friends thought. On the very first day she was excited and took her notebook that she wrote in, her sharpened pencils and a ruler and rubber that she got for Christmas. All in a little brown leather case.

The teacher had written all the letters of the alphabet on the blackboard, in perfect copperplate. 

When the children were told to write down the letters the child printed her story that went on and on and on until the teacher came to see what was happening. Seeing the rubber the teacher snatched up the ruler and said no rubbers allowed in class and to teach a lesson she hit the child on the hands with the ruler - smack, smack. 

The child's father had to be summoned from his work in the Council Chambers. The teacher picked her up and tried to comfort her but all the child could do was to sob more loudly and watch her green snot drip down the back of the teacher's black cardigan.

The father told the teacher that the child was remarkable. And he told the child that she was a most remarkable young woman. So the child went to work with the father on most days to keep her out of her mother’s hair, and later on that year and for many years afterwards went to the school when she felt like it.