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  Then I thought how wrong that all sounded. As usual I was too bossy, too dismissive of her grief. But what good would it do her to come home to McIvor Street, I argued with that annoying voice popping in and out of my head. It was such a wretched place now, where Mum buried herself under the blankets, bound to the bed where Dad died.

  ‘Besides,’ I smiled at Margie. ‘We’ll all be out of there soon. It will be good to start over somewhere new.’

  Fifteen

  A few months after we sold the McIvor Street house and eight months after Dad died, the family moved into a new home. My dad always had this crazy dream of starting a family business. It only became a possibility with his death and superannuation payout. He thought a hotel would be the best option as six of us, including Mum, had all worked part-time in hotels.

  I don’t recall a family meeting but maybe we gathered around the kitchen table to map out our future without Dad. Mum was only forty-three years old and still had four dependent children. She needed an income and somehow the decision was made. The Kent Hotel became available and she signed up for a two-year lease. Paul, who was twenty-five, resigned from his public service job. Tom, a year younger, took leave from his job at the Commonwealth Bank. Together they managed the hotel while Mum and the rest of us worked part-time, as needed. I was happy to mix up journalism and university with some waitressing and Margie, having battled through her HSC at St Martin’s in the Pines, was just starting her teaching degree at Mercy College. My two youngest brothers, John and Matthew, were back home after a boarding school stint. Seamus took up an apprenticeship with a local nursery. Andrew had moved to Torquay and came home some weekends to help in the hotel.

  The Kent was an impressive Art Deco building in inner Melbourne, in the heart of Carlton. Curtain Square, with its shady elm trees and giant gums was across the road from us. My brothers would kick footballs on the manicured lawns beside the children’s playgrounds.

  Rathdowne Street was deserted on the Sunday morning in early December when we moved in. I remember Mum carefully carried her treasured picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus from the removal van. She lifted it, wrapped in blankets, up the steep staircase and into the room that would become the ‘family room’.

  The rest of us dragged endless boxes of clothes and crockery, pots and pans and family photo albums from the van onto the footpath. Grandad moved in too but not Paul and Tom who were both married and had families of their own. Their young boys – Mathew, Michael and Luke – loved to visit ‘Nana’ at the hotel. They ran up and down the stairs and along the long corridor that ran from one end of the living space to the other.

  Margie and I chose a bedroom across from each other and shared one of the four bathrooms. Our kitchen overlooked the park and there was a cute balcony off the living room where we sat and pondered life.

  Now, whenever I walk past the Kent Hotel, I like to stop and picture my mother there on that day when we moved in. She beamed like a kid with a new bike. She looked the part of the friendly publican, pretty in her striped shirt and denim jeans. I grin and shake my head in disbelief when I remember how Mum and Margie and me would soak up the sun on the roof of the hotel. The three of us listening to music and rolling over at the same time to even out the tan on our legs.

  ‘We’re here. We’re really here,’ Mum said and hugged Margie as she unpacked family photos. ‘Can you believe it?’

  Margie held up a photo of the eight siblings, one that we posed for as a Christmas gift for Mum and Dad. ‘I love this one.’

  ‘I wish Dad were here.’

  ‘I know. We all do, it’s everything he would have wanted.’

  ‘Well it was his idea,’ I said as I threw a pile of towels and sheets on the floor and picked up another photo. It was the one of us three girls that I had pinned up at school. Mum was standing in the middle. She grinned out at me. Margie is radiant, cheeky, with her hands on her hips and head cocked to the side. I look like I’m in the middle of saying something, perhaps instructing the photographer? In time, I will come to treasure that photo, reading all kinds of things into the image.

  As we emptied the removal van, the sun began to sink and the sky turned a dusty pink. The boys dragged the last of the furniture into place and I wandered downstairs to the empty hotel. I saw Dad in the corner, leaning on the bar, and then I heard him telling stories to the customers. His Irish eyes alive again.

  ‘Caroline,’ Margie shouted through the small opening of the hotel’s kitchen. I looked up as I collected the meals.

  ‘Quick. It’s him,’ she called as I balanced a large dinner plate along the inside of my arm and another in each hand.

  ‘Who?’ I turned to look, scanning the busy bistro.

  ‘That guy from Cop Shop. Nick somebody.’

  There were more than seventy people in the dining room and I had no idea which guy she was talking about.

  Margie grinned and blushed, nodding her head towards a table at the front.

  ‘What a spunk,’ I whispered once I caught a glimpse of the heart-throb actor.

  ‘Order ready for table twelve,’ the chef barked at us. ‘Beef Wellington and two Chicken Parmas.’

  I ignored the grumpy chef and took my time. I knew the guys from Paul’s football club at Yarraville would not be in a hurry. Margie and I were having fun, behaving like schoolgirls. It was always the same when we worked together in the hotel. Even more fun when any of our girlfriends joined us for an extra busy shift.

  As the public bar regulars spilled into the bistro and crowded around our baby grand piano, the singing duo belted out their songs. Collecting plates and glasses, I hummed along to Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.

  Whenever I hear Elton John I am back at the Kent singing with Margie and Mum. Friday and Saturday nights at the pub were always busy. Friday was impromptu or ‘open mike’ night, when anyone from the crowd made their way to the piano and microphone.

  That night it was Dutch Tilders, and one of our regular blues singers, Kenny, had joined him in a session.

  It was also the night I met my husband.

  ‘He’s gorgeous,’ Margie said when I pointed out the new guy at the end of the bar.

  ‘He looks like Mel Gibson.’

  ‘More like Cary Grant,’ Mum decided when I introduced Jon to her.

  She seemed more excited than me. I was twenty-one and she worried I would be left on the shelf. She’d had three babies by the time she was my age.

  At the end of the night after everyone had left, we invited Jon to stay for pizza and more drinks. Paul took a turn at the microphone with Margie at the piano for a duet of ‘Benny and the Jets’ and Kim Carnes’s ‘Bette Davis Eyes’. It was good to see Margie back at the piano: smiling and singing like she did at Aunty Mary’s house all those years ago.

  While I swept the bar and emptied the overflowing ashtrays Jon talked about his year-long working holiday in Europe. Listening to him was like listening to Dad.

  Only the best table in the bistro will do for the Gleesons when they visit the hotel. Mum chooses one by the window, overlooking the park. She helps Margie and me set up the bistro, rushes in and out of the public bar, filling up drinks and taking orders for counter meals.

  ‘It’ll be good to see Uncle Ray and the boys,’ Mum says as we light the candles on the tables and check that all the vases have flowers.

  ‘I’m glad they’re coming. I haven’t seen them since Dad’s funeral.’

  ‘It’s nice to keep in touch. We’ve had some good times with them. You and Nick were babies when we first met. Inseparable villains you were back then.’

  ‘What was it like for you when Aunty Mary died?’

  We had never talked about it before and I didn’t know if it was the right time but sometimes I speak before I think. It felt like another lifetime when I would visit the Gleesons and practise for music exams on their piano, when I would go to the shops for Aunty Mary for a few groceries. She was always so generous and was the best co
ok I knew.

  ‘It was very sad,’ Mum says as we fill the cutlery trays. ‘I felt like I lost my best friend, but the boys, especially, had it tough. And then when Russell died, I thought Ray’s heart would break. Of course, Paul and Tom found it very hard too, losing a best friend so young.’

  ‘It was all so awful. I still don’t get it, Mum. Why should so much bad stuff happen to one family?’

  ‘Sometimes there just aren’t any answers. We never really know what’s ahead of us.’

  ‘I remember I used to be so scared that something bad would happen to me or my brothers. I was frightened that I’d hit my head and go blind, like Maurice and Nick.’

  ‘Well you always did have a crazy imagination,’ Mum grins, shaking her head at me.

  ‘What’s that smile for?’

  ‘Just remembering. It was your father’s fault. You were always dressing up with your sister, making up plays and TV shows. Your father encouraged you both and he usually joined in, he really did think he was a movie star.’

  When Maurice and Nick walk in to the pub, either side of Uncle Ray, I think how different they look now, much older.

  ‘Cally, Cally, Cally with the cast iron belly,’ Uncle Ray says and it feels like I’m five years old again as he hugs me hard.

  Dinner orders are taken, and I try to memorise them, pepper steak with vegetables, chicken Kiev with chips and salad, and lasagne for Nick.

  ‘How’s uni, Maurice?’ I ask.

  ‘Pretty good. It’s early days but I think it’s the right course for me.’

  ‘Social work, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It took a few goes to get accepted and to get the scholarship, but it was worth it. I even have my own driver now.’

  Maurice is probably kidding me, always the joker, showing off. Sure, he’s well respected in his job, a policy and advocacy manager at the Association for the Blind, and has awards for his community work. ‘What do you mean you’ve got a driver?’

  ‘My scholarship includes a Commonwealth car, because of all the case work and research I do, but the car’s no good to me so I get a driver as well.’

  ‘Wish I had one of those,’ Nick says. ‘Beats waiting for a train at Broady station.’

  ‘Or the last bus to Dallas,’ Margie adds, announcing her arrival at the table for Maurice and Nick while settling the steaming garlic bread in the centre of their table.

  ‘Yum. Smells good,’ Maurice says. ‘How’s teacher college going, Margie?’

  ‘Okay, I guess. I’ve done a couple of teaching rounds, but I’m thinking of deferring. I need some money and I’m thinking of moving into a house with some girlfriends,’ she says. ‘What’s Arts at Melbourne Uni like, Nick?’

  ‘I’m enjoying philosophy but don’t always get to the lectures. It’s easy to get lost.’

  From the corner of my eye, I see Bazza, one of the guys from the bar, giving Mum a look I don’t like, so I call him over to introduce him to Uncle Ray. Bazza’s okay, with his tattoos and missing front teeth, he’s probably harmless but I’m glad, just the same, when Uncle Ray stands up, towers over him and shakes his hand.

  Tom stops by the table. ‘Loading up on the carbs, Nick? I hear you’re training for the national championships in Perth. Any chance of a medal?’

  ‘Yeah, team selection was announced this week. I’m in for the hundred-metre sprints. And I’m taking Maurice with me for the relay. Michael’s in it too and maybe our mate, Jim. Some of us might even make it to Hong Kong later in the year.’

  ‘Well, good luck. I think Cally’s after another front-page story.’

  Paul brings over the drinks. ‘On the house. For all those sponge cakes Aunty Mary made for our birthdays.’

  We have been in the hotel several months when a journalist and photographer from Australasian Post arrive to interview Mum. They want photos of Valerie, the mother of eight children who runs a pub. The journalist, middle-aged with a taste for a fruity shiraz, has been to the hotel a couple of times before. Today he brings a photographer. He plans to feature us in the glossy national magazine.

  I watch my mother, puffy-faced and unsteady on her feet. She has taken something to help her relax. She wanders around the bar, serving customers, washing glasses, wiping the tables. All the time talking absent-mindedly to the journalist.

  It’s late afternoon and Matthew, the youngest of the family, is stacking wine bottles in the bottle shop. The photographer snaps him on the ladder. John, now a first-year apprentice chef, dons his chef’s hat and apron. He poses for a shot in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables.

  I pray the journalist doesn’t notice Mum slurring her words, as she tells him her story. She describes her husband’s dream for her and the family. She repeats it over and over in a vague way that makes it dull. I want to scream at Mum, tell her to sit down before she falls. But I say nothing. I wonder if any of the others, my brothers, or perhaps Margie, notice how Mum is behaving. Do they worry about her too? Am I just paranoid?

  ‘Mum, don’t you think you should lie down,’ I suggest when the journalist chats with Paul and Tom.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s just that you look tired and a rest would be good before it gets busy later.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘I don’t think you are.’

  I bite my tongue. I know I have said too much, pushed too far. Not far enough, I want to shout back at that nagging voice in my head. How many tablets did you take? I imagine myself screaming the questions at my mother. Why do you do it? But I chew hard on my lip to stop these spiteful words spilling out. People are laughing at you. You’re dropping cigarette ash everywhere, stumbling around in your high heels. The voice in my head goes on and on, round and round like a ball spinning on a roulette table.

  Of course, I don’t say any of it. But already it’s too late as Mum rushes at me, shouting when she shoves me hard on the arm.

  ‘You bitch. Who do you think you are?’

  But I refuse to fight with my mother the way I did when I was young and naive. Not now. Not with the journalist here and not in the middle of the hotel dining room.

  Instead I go upstairs to my room, sob into my pillow, wrapping it around my head to stop the voices. I roll over and stare at the ceiling as if Dad might fall through, fall from the sky and save me. Why me? You ask for it; the voice is back. Not anymore. I throw some clothes into a bag. Not anymore. I’m out of here.

  From the laneway behind the pub I head down the street to my girlfriends in their shared house in Canning Street. I race there, to my boarding school mates, Janine and Moylo and Jane, where I can pretend I’m normal.

  Running away again, I laugh at myself. Like when I was ten.

  She won’t come for you. She never did. Never will. She hates you. She’s always hated you.

  Sixteen

  In the hotel, we lived like lords, entertained like kings. We drove new cars, dined on fillet steak instead of chow mein. We made fancy cocktails and learned to appreciate fine wine. We shared it all with our friends as if there was an endless supply of money. It felt good. When each of us decided to bring a friend or two home for dinner there could be up to thirty of us gathered at the same time. We were living the dream, Dad’s dream.

  Mum was happy for a while. Singing like she did when we were young. Doris Day, Perry Como, Dean Martin filled our lives whenever she was in a good mood. Mum’s favourite was her double, Liv Maessen. Not only did she look like her but when she sang ‘Songbird’ she even managed to sound like her. That deep voice – a good voice for a windy school sports day – crooning from the shower. The songs of the seventies still manage to cheer me up. They take me back to when I was in primary school, to some happier times with Mum. Dancing with her to Rick Springfield and ‘Speak to the Sky’. Or Mum drowning out Johnny O’Keefe as she sang ‘She’s My Baby’. Some days it feels like I hear my mother more than I see her.

  When all was well at the hotel and Mum appeared to be mending her broken
heart, she even dated once or twice. I remember helping her to get ready for a Christmas party with an Irishman, a friend of the family. He had lost his wife, which made me feel okay about Mum going out with someone else. I gave her my new beige satin blouse to wear with a long black skirt. She was stunning as she raced out the door in my high heels. It was as if I was six years old again, watching her transformation for the Irish Ball all those years ago. I got my top back with a cigarette burn in the sleeve.

  I don’t know which came first, Mum’s sudden decline or the hotel’s financial battles. Both were troubling and needed to be fixed.

  Whenever I walk past the Kent Hotel now I proudly remember the way we all stuck together. I glance up at my bedroom window and try to remember the good times, like when Mum, Margie and me would squeeze onto my single bed and get the giggles, usually with Margie impersonating one of our regular customers. It still makes me smile when I picture the three of us climbing out onto the roof of the hotel, above the bistro, to soak up some sunshine and bake our coconut-oiled bodies.

  One day, close to the end of our time in the Carlton pub, the accountant sat with us and told us to trim the expenses. No more free meals, free drinks and no more freeloaders. We all had to work harder, for less. We returned the leased cars and those of us who could, worked for nothing as we tried to keep the hotel afloat. Ironically, business was booming and our hotel had become the most popular pub in town. Believing we could turn it around, Tom mortgaged his house and we borrowed from the bank. Then a bit more cash from a close relative allowed us to trade on, to stick it out. But we struggled to keep creditors at bay. Interest rates and mounting debt continued to rise. Ours may not have been a Christopher Skase affair or Alan Bond drama of the high spending early eighties, but it was tragic enough and had terrible consequences. Especially for Mum and Tom who lost the most. Perhaps we were too generous, too naive in the way we looked after family and friends.