Ambrose Ambles

 Twelve Caesars.

Book three..: "Twelve Caesars".

Part quintus.

The young men and women that grew from such a healthy outdoors environment , grew bodies that glowed with a shimmering water-silvered endowment that drew the jealousy of the gods! The sea –water that ran from their bodies when re-alighting onto ‘sharkey rock’ after a dive revealed all the beauty that nature could encompass in desire and comeliness in a youthful human form…their hungry eyes rejoiced in each other with a pagan worship of mother nature’s creation.

 

Having no money and no capacity to travel far, all the children congregated in a tribal-like conglomerate on the beaches . There was nothing in the stultifying doctrine of Catholicism or the Protestant work ethic that could not be laughed off under the pagan influence of sun , sea and surf and the merciful salvation of Fookes’s Fish and Chip Shop.

 

Ahh!..Mrs. Fookes..never did she know how much she helped create a revolution in her own small way, by her unconnected generosity to the local kids. From behind the counter of that unique fish and chippery, she contributed to the making of “baby-boomer” revolutionaries. She had a stride like a parade-ground Sergeant Major, and a voice to match..but her heart was of pure gold. She wasn’t like “Aunt Mary”, the railway porter on the train station who would line the kids up and threaten any delinquents that she would cut their heads off and put a cabbage in it’s place if’n she had any more cheek!

 

Mrs. Fookes saw how so many were scrawny kids hungry for a decent bit of daytime tucker, scrounging around for empty cool-drink bottles to cash in for a bob’s worth of chips..one of the kids would go inside with a few bottles at threepence each return deposit and Mrs Fookes would dish out more than a shillings chips and sometimes throw in a piece of fish that “was just laying around waiting for a mouth to eat “…and there’s a couple extra chips or a “ potato pattie for your little plump friend there at the door…he looks hungrier than the rest of you!” and the booty was all shared around amongst many..right down to greasy fingers dabbing up even the last salt grains..’all for one, one for all’…till she worked out a way to legitimise her care by pointing one day to some large empty glass jars in an alcove by the counter..”Listen you kids” she said in her commanding voice, “I want some interesting shells and things to make a sea-side display for the customers to look at while they wait..if you bring me something interesting or curious from the sea, I will give you some fish and chips in return…but it’s gotta be interesting, mind!” and she wagged a finger in warning to not try any silly buggers with her..and she meant it!..and she stuck to her word…The kids would bring their little treasures from Neptunes hoard and she’d exchange for tucker…Did anyone then realise what this meant, this system of barter ?..It meant freedom!..liberated from going home during the day for food..No longer under the parents watchful eyes the children were free to create their own sea-side society from morning to late afternoon,without oversight or consultation with adults!..God bless Mrs. Fookes!..and may a warm fire be forever burning in her hearth and warm slippers handy on a cold night…God bless her.

 

Mind you, she had to have a pretty tough hide to handle her fisherman husband ; Edgar Gordon Fookes…a stone-cutter by trade, fisherman by choice and garrulous old bastard by nature. Edgar and his sons had a fishers camp on the Yorke Peninsula, where they would set out to their secret fishing grounds and catch choice fish to clean and put on ice which Edgar would deliver straight back to the shop..never were fresher fish, more delicious fish and chips served to a long queue of faithful customers..five or more deep at the counter till a ticketing system had to be introduced.

 

Edgar would deliver his catch and then lean against the end of the counter smoking his big, fat meerschaum pipe and observing what he called ‘the idle rich” customers coming and going. He was a garrulous old bloke and the kids held their distance when he was around, saving their moments to barter with the kindly Mrs. Fookes when he was away.

 

One day , on a quiet afternoon, Edgar was “resting” on his arm at the end of the counter watching a matronly looking lady in heavy fur coat  peruse with concerned expression and a pair of  prinz nez opera glasses the trays of select fish in the display fridge…after several sweeps in this manner, Edgar could be observed huffing and puffing in an agitated way on his pipe..Edgar prided himself on the freshness and quality of his catch..Finally, the matron straightened up and dropping her glasses to her bosom, addressed Mrs. Fookes behind the counter.

 

“ Madam, “ she spoke in a ‘Toorak Gardens’ dialect , “Are these fish frrrrresh?”.

 

This was too much for Edgar to take lying down! He swiftly sidled up to the lady and taking his pipe with a sudden but measured movement from his mouth , he looked her square in the eye and informed her in a mocking emulation of the lady’s own accent;

 

“Madam!...if they were any frrrrresher…they’d be indecent!” and he turned abruptly away to resume his place at the end of the counter..huffing and puffing at his pipe.

These long, hot, glorious days of summer, over the growing years of all those children developed a naturalism in their hearts that far outweighed the confected indoctrination from the adult world of conservative ritual and religious corruption..even the memories of corporal punishment metered out with summary judgement by Sister Laurence, the playground “enforcer”, armed not with swish or cane like the other nuns, but rather with a fore-arm’s length of stout jarrah wood that she came bearing down on young Christopher who was playing marbles in a “forbidden area” with Brian Hurley , her habit and cloak billowing in the wind with a scowl on her face and the lump of jarrah raised in her claw-like hand looking for all the world like a Valkrie descending…and to this day, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkries” conjures the exact picture of that moment for Christopher.

 

Then there were days of adventure, the world of adults figuring very little in the imaginations of these groups of young kids creating fantastic worlds among the gullies and hills on the edge of the sea..there were many warrens of rabbits dotted among the wild olives and oleanders and blue-bush where young boys would go rabbiting to pick up a few bob selling their catches to the houses of their friends and neighbours…Willy Wilson had ferrets, and one day we made the trek up to the top of the gully near to the old Linwood Quarry… On “our side” of the gully, up the hill a ways, there was a ruin of a house..or rather, not really a ruin, but the remnants of an intention to build..it perhaps was one of those ill-fated projects that get started by one of the party “in expectation of”..but is then abandoned when things go awry…I know of a few such stories..quite sad, really…I’ll tell you about them someday..

Anyway, we closed off the windows and doors in this one-roomed ‘fort” and we started a “club”…and we called it “The Kit Kat Klub”…I don’t know for the life of me where we got that name…all I can think of is perhaps that old sit-com ; “The Private World of Dobie Gilles” (perhaps!).

But the “eternal enemy” from across the gully..no!..not the O’Niels this time, but those German immigrants ..; the Skrypeks and the Leuchells…broke in and graffitied our club name there on the wall to : “The Shit Kat Klub”….bastards!

It was then that I learned of the abyss that divided catholicism from the proddos’…WE would never have written the word ; “shit” on any wall…THAT would be a “cardinal sin” !…just seeing the word there, I remember made me blush…but also perhaps, dangerously, awoke in me a curiosity for the power of the word.

Yes..growing up with only half a clue as to what is really going on in the adult world maybe a good thing. And speaking of girls when you are growing up..I remember this little plump girl used to hang around us down the beach all those long hot summers..Cyglinda..or Ziggy as we used to call her…it was amazing how in the space of only a couple of summers, she had lost that puppy-fat..or rather it had moved to all the right places and those scraggly locks of wispy hair had grown to blonde tresses to be admired…amazing!!

Ziggy became Cyglinda..once again and where only a couple of years ago she had thrown Davey Parker over her shoulder in a full toss for giving her lip, there walked with demure poise an attractive young lady!

Ah yes…Cyglinda …her old man was, I believe a unrepentant Hitlerite..He had a white scar ran around his neck, about half an inch wide where he claimed a Polish officer, when he was captured as a German soldier, had cut his throat and left him in the snow…He survived, as was apparent..and thrived on Emma Street .

Emma Street held a sort of local “infamy”, in that it was the scene of a fateful train collision where two people, a man and his wife were killed. There were no bells or wig-wag signals there and the train came suddenly onto the crossing from between a cutting.

It wasn’t so dangerous in the days of steam locomotives, as the noise and smoke from the engine gave warning…but with the onset of the old “Red-Hen” diesel electric trains, they were much quieter.

The train-line came out of a cutting onto a high embankment that fell away on both sides..The road wound into the gully past Langdon’s and Willy Wilson’s place, curved around the base and ascended the side of the hill straight onto the Emma Street crossing.

It was there every night, the grandmother of the four children of those parents killed , would walk to the crossing with the children to meet the parents on the other side and then they would all get into the car for the ride home just up The Cove Road a ways…so they were there when the car was hit and they must have saw their parents killed. It was talked about for years. The crossing was closed after that accident.

I must have been about nine or ten years old then. I remember hearing the crash while we were racing our bitzas down Paringa Avenue hill..it wasn’t a crash!, but more of a whoomph!..and someone said ;

‘Was that a crash?”…but then it was silent so we went back to our bitzas..until the sirens came and then we ran toward the station and we could see the “Red-Hen” train stopped just at Emma Street crossing and we knew it was an accident.

When I got there, I could see these two bodies laid out on the ground with sheets covering them..but the sheets were not long enough to cover the entire body, so the feet stuck out the bottom…It was a man and a woman..the man had black patent-leather shoes and his feet were leaning away from each other in a ‘V’..The woman had stockings on and one apricot “pump” shoe on her right foot, there was only the one shoe..but in their haste to make the bodies half decent, they had put the ladies shoe on the wrong foot, and it hung there by the toes…and I had this almost unstoppable urge to go and put the shoe (an apricot one with a white petal with a bright pearl centre fixed at the tongue) on the correct foot…of course, I didn’t.

I was staring at this strange and to me, unsightly anomaly; transfixed by this one disorderly item when the world came crashing in with Willy Wilson’s pitched voice calling my name….I looked to where he was standing at the bottom of the high embankment on which we stood .

“Is it an accident? “ he asked in all innocence.

“Yes!” I replied

“Anyone hurt?”

“Yes”.

“Oh…..Hey!…I’m going ferret’n tomorra…wanna come?”…I had turned back to the bodies there and was once again held by the offending shoe..and that was the funny thing , it was the shoe that worried me more than the two people dead there…very strange !

“D’you wanna come!!” Willie called again…an as I turned away a big copper appeared on the scene and called for us kids to clear off out of it..

“Someone get these kids out of here!” he yelled…”C’mon..get out of it you kids..bugger off!”

We turned and ran away and I remembered Willy , so I called back to him..

“Ok..yeah!..tomorro’ at my place..ok?”…and I could see my mother coming with that cross look on her face so I ducked past Hogben’s place across the paddock to home. But I tell you what..those ferrets of Willy’s were an out of control lot..and he didn’t know that much about the fine art of ferreting and that turned out to be one big adventure!

I was telling you about Willie Wilson and his ferrets…Willie Wilson kept ferrets, he used them for trapping rabbits in any of the multitude of warrens dotted about the hills where I grew up before the Mixxy got a hold..I’m talking back in the late fifties or so. A lot of people kept ferrets for that purpose in those days..there was a front-bar trade in fresh bunny-meat back then..along with local caught fish like snook and such, that you could buy off the catchers down at the Seacliff Hotel….I know, ’cause my old man used to come home of a Thursday evening, with a smile on his face, a good half-dozen long-necks clinking away in his kit-bag, a big bar of Cadbury’s chocolate in his rough hands and a roll of newspaper-wrapped fresh produce under his arm…every Thursday night, like clockwork…that’s how it went in those days..before age, homesickness for the old country and the drink got a hold on him…that’s how it went in those days…

Willie Wilson kept ferrets, so did the Oxfords…and the O’Niels..not the ones on the corner, but down by the station…The O’Niels on the corner..( one ; John, grew up to become a copper in forensics and he had to deal with those “Snowtown Murders” ..it done for him..I’ll tell you about him one day). They kept ferrets to catch rabbits…the ferrets were clean, but the cages would sometimes stink to high heaven!..Tex, Marlene Oxford’s long time beau kept the cages clean,,I’ll tell you about him too someday. Tex knew how to hunt with ferrets…Willie was just learning…it was a slow job with Willie…he was young, he was keen.

I can only recall going “ferreting” with Willie once…just after that Emma St. crossing crash that I told you about..The day was cold, it was wet and the whole episode was a disaster for both ferreting and friendship. There were four of us..Davey Parker, Bruce Irving, myself and Willie..we took turns carrying the cage with the ferrets..we hiked right up to the top of the long gully, not far from the old Linwood Quarry, where one of the O’Niel men (there were four families, not related , in the district) got his coat caught in the crusher feeder and was killed there…I can just remember the wife coming to our place and my Mother comforting her with some prayers…I suppose it was a catholic thing.

There is an art to catching rabbits with ferrets…Willie did not have that art..all he did was to block as many holes as he had nets, bury in the rest and then let the ferret down one hole..if all goes well, the rabbits will flee the ferret and get caught in any one of the nets as they run out of the warren..the biggest worry, is that if the ferret is hungry, it will trap and kill a rabbit down in the warren and remain there till it eats it to it’s hearts content. Then all you can do is to try to smoke it out or wait.

That’s what must have happened..after the rabbits stopped coming out, the ferret remained. Willie tried to smoke it out with setting fire to some paper in one of the holes, but all it did was to sear the ferrets nose and made it flee back down the warren……..and it rained..and it rained, and rained, and rained some more till we all looked like a picture of one of those groups of American Indian’s sitting under their blankets on the prairie..except we didn’t have blankets, just wet skin, cold hands and it was getting dark and we lost our patience and our kid-tempers and told Willie where he could stick his ferret IF it EVER came out and to our dying shame, we deserted him there and then.

Not my most glorious moment, but there is only so much the patience of a child can stand, especially when we could see more rabbits hopping about the dusky hill-sides than what we caught with the stupid ferret!

The last I heard of Willie Wilson , and that was many, many years ago, was from aforementioned Bruce…He mentioned he had bumped into Willie at the old “Vincent Hotel” there on Mosely Square.

“He was hard up for some dough and he said in all confidence that he had been “casing” this jeweler shop down Jetty Road, and he had a plan all worked out on how to rob the place….I told him I didn’t want to know…truth is ; I thought he was full of bullshit at the time” Bruce took a healthy drought from his pint of beer.

“And then?” I asked.

“Well..I was wrong..he did rob the shop…or rather..he TRIED to rob the shop..”

Now..bear with me dear reader and let us ‘workshop’ through what Bruce told me :

It seems that Willy’s “well thought out plan” consisted of an early hours raid on the shop with the help of an airline bag with half a house-brick secreted inside it. The object of the brick was to penetrate the plate-glass shop-front, the airline bag was to transport the swag away…devilishly clever , what?

But…(there’s always a but in these plans).

Scene: Willie stands in front of the jeweler shop , it is three am. No-one is about..he takes the half-brick from the bag and flings it toward the window….

STOP!…

Let us apply the filmatic application of slow motion to the following scene…: We are at the moment where the brick has just left the grip of Willy’s right hand..At that very moment, a police patrol on it’s regular neighbourhood patrol turns the corner into Jetty Road two shops down from the Jeweller..The lights attract Willy’s gaze and he turns his head (we’re still in slow motion, mind) toward the source..the police officer in the passengers seat likewise turns his gaze toward a person in the moment of executing an unexpected action on the sidewalk of number one fifty six Jetty Road Glenelg..The half-brick continues it’s unstoppable course toward the plate glass…cause and effect is inevitable.

The upshot (if we return to real time) was that the patrol car had pulled up, apprehended and escorted Willy to the back seat of the patrol car while the last shards of the plate-glass window was still tinkling onto the sidewalk…cruel fate.

And that was that for Willy Wilson as far as I can report. I have heard no more.

 

 

Christopher coasted through those years of primary schooling..The rudimentary academic education barely sufficient to claim a place in a lower stream of the state high school, while the totally useless religious indoctrination was, presumably necessary to keep him “in the faith” for the more important Catholic principle of saving his eternal soul. Never was a more futile project implemented by more tragic adherents to a faith never more doomed to ethical and moral disintegration..thankfully, such is the inevitable fate of all religion…curse them, curse them and cast them all to the rubbish-bin of history!

 

But there were traitors in the camp..is there anything easier to find than a traitor?..There were those, born too close to the end of the war that would align themselves too readily with the conservative ambitions of their parents and teachers. These were the one’s given and eagerly accepting the roles of ‘prefect” or “house captain”..These traitors were the sleepers that were groomed like the ‘domestic steer’ to give example to and lead the next generation on the similar path to their elders..curse their souls to perdition! Keen as mustard for the ‘glittering prize’ of financial reward or recognised kudos, their eyes keen for advantage over their neighbour, fellow worker, brother or sister, they easily absorbed the tactics and strategy of their social masters, well fitted and suited to a Judas class.

 

But these quislings were to give themselves away by their keen association with appointed positioning by authority..They were the ones quick to grasp the baton to lead the house marches around the parade ground at the end of the sports day in the St. Josephs school . The O’Connell’s, the Vort-Ronald’s, the Van Der Lindens et al, high-stepping to the thumping piano tunes of Mrs.Gilchrist as she belted out a Sousa march on the old upright piano near the corner of the tennis courts by the front gate of the school, while behind those “creatures” in desultory obedience under threat of Sister Laurence’s jarrah log, the rest of the school kids swung their arms in militaristic style to the foreboding tunes and the House banners…Mercy / blue..Rosary / red..Lourdes / green and Fatima / yellow…around and around they would march until Mrs. Gilchrist’s  piano thumped its last note and the “battalion” was bought to a stumbling, colliding , comical halt in place for Father Collins to deliver his gospel of the day in the dulcet tones of his West Ireland brogue..

 

Which would best describe the final year of Christopher’s primary education.

 

 

“…I often think and wonder

If he kicked me by mistake

Some body-else would they

In silence it not take.

Well, it is getting late

And it’s time to say ; “Addio”.

He smiles, and goes his way

(And we will meet “tomorrow”).

 

The passing of one’s childhood years portends the approach of those dangerous years of puberty and sexual exploration..and whatever the instruction from well-meaning adult or confessor, these years of self-doubt and egotistical vanity can only be lived by oneself and by oneself only…it is a lonely path in a jungle of wild creatures waiting to spring!

 

Christopher entered the puberty years cautiously and immediately fell in love with a girl in his High-school class…Nena Beerbaum…who, being of the same age as himself..thirteen years, barely acknowledged his existence, being more attracted to the boys from the higher forms. But that was neither here nor there, because Christopher was an absolute novice at what constituted ‘going ‘round with’ a girl..himself even unsure in those times of what one would do if and when one went with a girl…and although he would not admit such to anyone of his peers, who all except the exceptionally shy, Michael Cretchley, seemed to know exactly what one did when alone with a girlfriend..

 

“When you’ve kissed her enough, you put it up there, don’t you?” said Joe Adams, the biggest, most erudite kid in the class…he seemed to know of these things..But put it up where?..thought Christopher..it being the days before any ready access to such pictorial descriptive magazines that depicted naked women in wanton display, it was left to his imagination to try to conjure in his mind the “up there” location spoke about with such confidence by Joe Adams..and several of the other boys nodding in suave agreement.

 

But Christopher had never had the curiosity to enquire of the female reproductive system…this sudden interest in girls seemed to grow out of nowhere to now intrude upon his everyday thoughts..he knew “it” was “down there” between a girl’s legs because that was where everything else was and the short skirts worn by Nena and her coterie drew his eyes to that location every recess and lunchtime when he wasn’t playing games up on the oval..but what was it that Joe and other older boys referred to?...Christopher remembered when he was so much younger..a small boy of around six or seven years standing next to his one year older sister down the garden and urinating while she did the same in a squat next to him..

 

“Why can’t you stand when you go to the toilet?” Christopher asked.

“Because I haven’t got one of those” Violet, his sister answered..and she motioned to his penis.

“What have you got?” he asked innocently, as this was the first time such a thing came of interest.

“Nothing..it just comes out from inside of me” his sister answered..and sure enough, when Christopher had a cursory glance at the place of interest, there was little of note to see..just a sort of seam in the skin and that was it…certainly an unfortunate lacking of necessary equipment as far as he was concerned..he enquired of his mother later why this was so..

“Because she is a girl and you are a boy.” Was the only thing his mother would say except to add that he would find out all about it in years to come…needless to say that at his tender age, Christopher was not in the least curious……..until now!...and although he knew that a certain “congress” between a man and a women was what made babies, he was still not dead sure what that detail was..and the devil of it was that without explicit detail of the actions required, there was no place to go to for knowledge..the strict Catholicism of his parents forbade any mention of sexual proclivities and the current curriculum in the high schools of the times had not to date embraced any sex-education classes that an awakening young people in the mid sixties of the twentieth century demanded and it was not until a burgeoning youth pregnancy rate dropped like a bomb on the bowdlerish adults in the room that it was decided the best way to frighten the girls off sex was to drag them to sex-education classes..the boys loved the illustrations!

 

Anything to do with female genitalia and its miraculous actions was hidden away like the bottles of wine Christopher’s father secreted around the flower-beds of the house…even the packages of “vanity pads” on the rack in Rowlands store down the end of the street, were discreetly hid away in plain brown-paper bags..and again was the evasive answer given to Christopher one day when out of curiosity, he asked Mr. Rowlands what was in the bags?

 

“You’ll find out one day, my lad”..he answered in his Yorkshire tone and he gave a wry smile..and that was it..and another time in that same age, he went to take a clean rag that hung side by side with others similar from the washing line to use for himself, his Mother snatched it back off him and chastised him with :

 

“Can’t I have my personal things left alone!”….and that was it as far as any gender detail went. There were so many mysteries that a young boy was shielded from..like the name ‘virgin’ which was thrown around whenever the mother of Jesus Christ was mentioned..”The Virgin Mary”, she was called..virgin, virgin..what was this?..he decided out of the blue at the dinner table one night to ask his father..

 

“Dad…what’s a virgin?”…his father halted the action of raising his fork with the cut of mutton on it to his mouth..which remained open for the moment..thought on it and then evasively replied..”Ask your mother.”

 

“Mum…” Christopher began, but his mother cut in..

 

“It’s a girl who hasn’t….known a man..” she softly spoke. Christopher thought for a minute or two on this advice, then with a clarity of certainty he blurted ;

 

“Well, there can’t be any around here, as I am a man and all the girls in this family know me.”…and with that comforting certainty of knowledge, he went back to eating his mutton chops and three vegetables…There was a degree of suppressed coughing from the head of the table..

 

Once in high school and at the coming of age, this strange conundrum came up of why was he interested in those girl creatures all of a sudden?..What was the strange power held in abeyance from him? Why did he want to get close to Nena so he could smell her strange girl-perfume, hear her soft lisping tone of speaking, the rustle of her clothing the shapely form of her body..oh how he yearned for the unknowing and at that point of his tender years..the unknowable!

 

He would try to flirt with her with clumsy teasing phrases like ; “Your slip’s showing”..a line he was told by his older brother…and other equally gormless trys until Nena would in variably tire of his insistence and tell him to “rack off!”…or ; “Don’t be stupid!”…and she would wound him..but not enough to drive him completely away, for the attraction was greater than mere warning could dissuade…and he would return…and she would tolerate him once more..

 

But the flirting on his part and the condescending tolerance on her part was as close as Christopher would ever get to the alluring mystery of Nena Beerbaum in his short sojourn at secondary education..for once the tantalising age of fifteen was in sight, Christopher waved goodbye to all his school chums at the school gate as they fled to their respective homes for the summer holidays…one of the boys called to him to cry ;

“See you next year!”

“Not if I can help it!” Christopher called back as he pedalled away from the last of his juvenile years..a new world of work and wages was now open to him.