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  Anyway, when he became peculiar my mother had to go back and forth to “Thermopylae” to clean the place and cook him an occasional meal. He usually muttered and growled at her while she worked, or else sat out on the veranda to watch for passing ships—he had been an old Port Phillip pilot and before that a master in sail.

  Under the house he had a collection of nautical odds and ends, and from this he had resurrected the wheel of the Arabella, a schooner wrecked years before somewhere off the Victorian coast. He fixed this to the veranda rail and standing there would steer the house towards the Heads, muttering and cursing and glaring at the horizon.

  This of course didn’t hurt anyone, and no one minded when he fitted the veranda with navigation lights and a binnacle. Complaints from Peters and other neighbours only began when he found a megaphone and used it to roar and blaspheme at ships out in the channel.

  After a few months of this my mother said wearily, “It’s not a bit of good—we can’t watch him from here any longer. Either we’ll have to go there, or he will have to come here to us.”

  From behind his newspaper my father muttered, “I’d sooner bring a grizzly bear to live here.”

  When my mother didn’t answer him he sighed after a time and said, “Very well—we’ll go, I suppose. I like the pater well enough, but I know nothing about ships or Tolstoy, or what’s wrong with Darwinism—”

  “It’s a big house.”

  “It’s ready to fall into the sea, I can tell you.”

  “But it was repaired not long ago.”

  My father lapsed into moody silence. After some time my mother said in a voice not intended for our ears, “It may be possible to put him in a home. Some people are doing this nowadays, you know. After all, it’s hardly right for old people to live where there are young families.”

  My father threw down his paper. “For heaven’s sake stop talking nonsense, girl! Did your father put you in a home when you were a squalling brat and he had to put up with you—did he now?”

  My mother supposed not.

  “No, he did what any decent human being should do—he looked after you. And now it’s our turn to do the same for him. Anyhow, he’d tear a home apart.”

  My father was a rate collector with the council. He had gone to this job when he had come home from the war, and he didn’t much like it. I recall that he was always studying for accountancy examinations to give him the opportunity of becoming shire secretary, but somehow his studying suffered frequent interruptions: my brother Ian was a bad sleeper when he was a baby; there was a prolonged family row with Aunt Ruby, then, in the fateful year of 1929, I interrupted him to an even greater degree than anyone. Anyway, when a new shire secretary was appointed my father was not selected and he went on all his life working as a rate collector and always felt he had failed. I realize now that he didn’t fail at all in the things that mattered.

  His own father had been a printer and bookseller in London. My father always referred to England as “Home”; in fact England was “Home” to most of our friends. It seemed a place tremendously far off to me, a place I always associated with the house in East Melbourne where my father had been born and where his mother still lived.

  Grandfather McDonald on the other hand was a Scot, though he had come to Australia as a child. ­“Thermopylae” was over sixty years old and had ­probably only once been painted. It was high off the ground at the front and low against a hillside at the back. All around it was a wooden veranda, many of the boards by now loose. Inside was a large central living-room with the other rooms opening off it. In this room there were pictures of sailing ships and their bearded captains on every wall; also a sampler worked by Grandmother McDonald when she was a girl of twelve: WORK FOR THE NIGHT IS COMING. AGNES MCINTYRE 1860. All the inside walls were lined with tongued and grooved pine, and the whole place smelt old and musty. It creaked distinctly in high winds and was draughty even in a breeze. According to my father Grandfather McDonald liked to feel he was on the open deck, so to hell with comfort. Outside he had a flagpole from which he flew a flag on the King’s Birthday, Anzac Day and various other commemorative occasions. It had once been the mast, I believe, of the same Arabella.

  This was the house then that we were to live in during 1929.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I don’t recall a great deal about the preparations to move to “Thermopylae” except that we let our house partly furnished to a family named Harris—Molly Harris was a girl at school. The arrival, though, I remember well.

  Although Squid Peters lived next door this was not next door in the suburban sense, since the blocks along the cliffs were large and Squid’s place was separated from Grandfather McDonald’s by a barrier of tea-tree and a few large banksias, so that we could hardly see Peters’ house at all. In a fork of a large banksia, at a height of about fifteen feet, Squid had made himself a platform where he sometimes sat Buddah-like, ­surveying the world. Unlike Buddah he was far from fat, in fact at thirteen there was nothing much of him but freckles and tow hair and a wary, but ingratiating expression. His father had been killed at the war. This was of course sad, nevertheless Squid didn’t fail to cap­italize on it. On Anzac Day he always laid a wreath the size of a lifebelt and wore more medals than George V. His most graphic story was of his father’s rearguard action with the Turks while the rest of his battalion were being evacuated from Gallipoli. It was ten years before it struck me that Mr Peters must have left home at least eighteen months before Squid was born.

  Squid’s full name was Birdwood Monash Peters. The family had come from South Australia—“a State with some-think rather genteel about it,” Mrs Peters said. She was a pianist with a genius for mood music, which she played by ear at the pictures. When Tom Mix or Buck Jones galloped across the prairies, she galloped up and down the keyboard without taking her eyes off the screen.

  I was supposed, of course, to help with the move to “Thermopylae”, though there was not a great deal to do, since the house was already furnished. We loaded the few things we needed on to one of Hopkins’s lorries while the family walked in advance from home to Grandfather’s. My father and mother walked in front, my father carefully raising his hat to everyone we met, then I came with Gyp on a lead, then came Ian, walking in the gutter, or breathing on shop windows so that he could write his “minitials”. Kananook was by no means a large town in those days and pretty well everyone knew us.

  When we arrived at “Thermopylae” I saw Squid sitting on his platform trying to screen himself behind leaves while he studied our possessions. I pretended not to have noticed him there and went on carrying things in without looking up. Now and again, if anything special came in, like the ice chest, he would glance down and whisper loudly to his mother, who was out of sight below, “A big ice chest,” or “A crystal wireless.” These were about the total of our luxuries.

  I wandered over to him when we had finished, mainly to let him know we had seen him there. Before I could speak he said seriously, “Just as well you’ve come, I reckon.”

  I looked up irritably and asked why.

  “Somethink wrong with your grandfather all right.” He tapped his head sadly.

  “He’s just old,” I said.

  “Must be a bit barmy too, don’t you reckon? No feller who wasn’t barmy would shout at ships the way he does.”

  “He was a pilot down at the Heads—”

  “I know; I know every ship he was ever on, I reckon. He yells it all out.” All this he said dolefully, as if the case of Grandfather genuinely perturbed him.

  We had not been talking long when Grandfather came onto the veranda. I moved downhill so that Squid would look away from the house, but it was no good. In a moment there was a fearful shout, “Ahoy, ye bluidy fool! Y’ nearly on the bank.”

  There he stood, beard blowing in the breeze, eyes blazing, glasses swinging round his neck as he strode restlessly up
and down.

  “There, what did I tell you?” said Squid in an awed voice.

  I could think of nothing to say. Grandfather went to the wheel, turning it a little this way and that. Because of the slope he was almost at Squid’s level and about twenty yards behind us.

  “Wear off, y’ maniac.”

  I said defensively, “He’s deaf and doesn’t know he’s shouting so loudly. Anyhow, the ships worry him—”

  “There’s not a ship in sight,” said Squid mournfully. “Not a rowing boat—nothink.”

  I felt a wave of humiliation sweep over me. Then Grandfather suddenly spied Squid on his platform.

  “You aloft there! On deck, or by God I’ll flog the life out o’ ye!”

  An expression of shock passed over Squid’s face, but with presence of mind he cried, “Ay, ay, sir!” while he backed hurriedly off his platform and let himself down by a rope into the tea-tree.

  Grandfather came to the rail, ready to direct another blast at him, but just then my mother came and he allowed himself to be led inside.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When the door closed behind my grandfather I turned round and saw Squid’s strained face looking out of the bushes.

  “It’s no good the way he carries on. It’s got my mum scared stiff.”

  “You too,” I said.

  Every freckle on his face was standing out clearly. These freckles were usually part of his stock in trade. According to his mother they were the cause of his sensitiveness and my own mother had warned me not to mention them to him. All of which was nonsense, for he charged a penny for an inspection of the freckles on his back and twopence to inspect his stomach.

  “You’re scared yourself,” I repeated.

  He didn’t answer. I could see him trying to think of something to restore his dignity. He was a past master at turning defeat into victory by thinking up something unusual. Sure enough it came.

  Presently he said, “I been learning hypnotism.” He looked at me from under lowered lids.

  It was the sort of claim one could expect from Squid. “Baloney,” I said.

  He looked at me in a hurt way. “It’s true. I got it out of a book loaned me by a Indian bloke like Gandhi.”

  “Try it on me, then,” I said, staring at him.

  He shook his head. “Too risky. You got blue eyes and the book says it could bring on brain fever for anyone with blue eyes.”

  “Try it on Gyp, then.”

  Before he could answer I whistled Gyp. He came from under the veranda and looked at us interestedly. He was a cross between a Labrador and a Kelpie—or we supposed he was—a large black dog who spent most of his days chasing seagulls or retrieving sticks, or on Guy Fawkes Night attacking crackers.

  “Here, Gyp.” He slobbered over me and sat down attentively. “Squid’s going to hypnotize you.”

  He grinned and hung out his tongue.

  Squid changed his mind. “No,” he said gravely, “no, it could make him go mad. If he bit someone, then they’d go mad. It goes on and on.”

  Gyp looked disappointed. He lay in the sun and closed his eyes.

  “There’s one thing I can do—there’s our chooks. If y’ very good at it, y’ can hypnotize chooks.”

  “All right,” I said. “When do you start?”

  He peered through the tangle of branches into his back yard. “Mum’s down the street, I think.” He threw a pebble on the iron roof and when this brought no protest he invited me through the gap in the fence.

  Peters’ yard was a jungle of tea-tree, a quiet place and always gloomy. The fowl-yard was at the edge of the cliff and in it a dozen Plymouth Rocks scratched half-heartedly.

  “Better get going,” I said tauntingly.

  Squid looked hurt at my disbelief. I squatted outside the yard while he went in. The hens were so quiet that they hardly bothered getting out of his way. He scooped one up. It squawked feebly, but stopped as soon as he held it before his eyes and began murmuring some sort of gibberish.

  This went on for some time, his voice rising and falling. I was beginning to regard the performance scornfully when he lowered the hen and swung it back and forth above the ground, using his arms like a pendulum; back and forth it went while his muttering rose in key till it sounded like a wail from a long way off. All at once he turned the hen on its back and lay it on the ground. It stayed there, its feet pointing at the sky, the stiffest hen I’d ever seen.

  “Hell!” I breathed.

  Squid ignored me and scooped up another. He stared into its eyes muttering the gibberish again, then began the swinging motion and in a minute a second hen lay beside the first. By the time he had put three in a row, all their feet stupidly in the air, he whispered, “I better stop. It fair takes the power outer me.”

  He waved his hands over the recumbent hens, fingers extended, then came out to me, his face haggard. The first hen presently recovered, got to its feet, wobbled a bit and began pecking the ground again.

  “How do you do it?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head. “Some people has it, some hasn’t.” He looked at me closely. “With blue eyes you’d never have no hope—that’s what the Indian feller in the book says.”

  The second hen struggled up and looked about glassily.

  “When do I read the book?”

  “I had t’ give it back.”

  I looked into his freckled face, trying to tell whether he was making all this up, but he looked serious, a bit afraid even of his own power; besides, the last hen still lay on its back as evidence. He clapped his hands and after a second it lurched to its feet.

  “Well,” he said recovering himself, “I better chop the wood.”

  “Hang on—” I began.

  But he left me with the air of a man to whom mir­acles were nothing. I never saw him repeat this particular miracle and I never really learnt the secret of it. It at least made the day of our move to “Thermopylae” a memorable one.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There were five of us at “Thermopylae”. My mother was the busiest and calmest one of us all, yet everything revolved around her. I see now that she had the knack of getting her own way almost effortlessly. Yet she was a shy woman and inclined to depression. Perhaps because she had lived all her life in Kananook and was known to everyone, she felt concerned always for the family’s reputation: even to receive an account rendered from one of the local shopkeepers was to her like being accused of theft.

  In those days I saw her in only one hat and with one handbag—this was at the beginning of the depression, of course, when most people we knew had to manage on little.

  My father’s clothing difficulties were no easier. Although his collars were always starched and shining, the patching of some of his shirts would not have allowed him to take off his coat, let alone his waistcoat, even had he thought this proper.

  My father was no doubt a frustrated man, irked always by the lowly job he had. I heard him debate occasionally with Grandfather, just to please the old man, but I could never be sure what his views were. He would sing sometimes in the Church of England choir and sometimes Ian would sing there, too. Ian was nine then and had a soprano voice of such purity that anyone not knowing him would have thought him a paragon of holiness. When he sang something like “Oh, For the Wings of a Dove” he even convinced me; but then I would hear him singing it around the house while he tied Gyp and the cat together, or tried between breaths, to throw my marbles from the veranda into the sea.

  My grandfather, the main character at “Thermopylae”, I have already tried to describe. In his day he had been a great debater and liked to argue ferociously about such things as Darwinism, or the truths revealed in the Book of Revelations, or the curse of usury. By the time we came to “Thermopylae” his debating days were over and he spent hours at a time ruminating and rumbling to hims
elf or sometimes flaring out with some startling question like, “And who was the Abomination of Desolation but Darwin?”

  Though he stared challengingly at us he really expected no answers.

  There was a slight burr to his speech. He had left Scotland as a boy and had never been back, but he spoke as bitterly about Culloden Moor and “the Royal Butcher” as if he had been at the battle himself.

  I remember him best at the table, growling a Gaelic grace to himself, his mouth and whole beard moving. His jaw was larger on one side than the other, as he had been kicked in the face by a horse years before. His jaw had been set by Grandmother, since he didn’t believe in calling doctors. My father always claimed that the horse had broken its leg—which could well enough have been true.

  An old debating companion sometimes came to see him. This was Mr Theo Matthias, a man who was said to be a Bolshevik. He was given this label I think by my Aunt Ruby—of whom more later—after his flare-up one day in church. It had been Mr Matthias’s habit for years to go to the vestry after Sunday morning service to argue about the sermon with the vicar. As he got older his arguments became more and more testy. At last one morning during the prayer for the King he stood up as Mr Timms reached, “. . . thy chosen servant George our King—” and declared, “Chosen poppy-cock!” and walked out, his short beard thrust forward like a tusk. From then on he was an established Bolshevik—an accusation that drove Grandfather to fury.

  In the earlier twenties these two old men had gone fishing together each Saturday and it was said that when they were a mile out in the channel you could hear their voices from “Thermoplyae’s” veranda.

  Grandfather’s boat was now only a relic of those days. It slept in its decrepit shed at the foot of the cliffs. Occasionally I was allowed to take it out, but I knew hardly anything of seamanship, even though I had lived by the Bay all my life.

  The cliffs below “Thermopylae” were not true cliffs; at least, they were neither sheer nor rocky. Their sloping face was covered with thick vegetation, all bent inland. Down through the twisted trees a few tunnel-like tracks zigzagged to the sand.