SEX IS FOR SINNERS
(Love is for leprechauns)
By Michael Morel
Published by Lifeset Publications
at Smashwords
Copyright 2011. Michael Morel
Discover other titles by Michael Morel
Horatio Hope
The Organic Mind
Earth Reborn
Dickheads and Witches
Confidence for Life: Teachers Resource Manual
ISBN: 978-0-9871958-3-8
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DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to my ancestors (especially the Irish)
CONTENTS
Chapter 2: Welcome to planet Earth – 1934
Chapter 4: Mick’s mixed marriage
Chapter 5: Dr Livingstone, I presume
Chapter 7: When the pupil is ready
PROLOGUE
SWITZERLAND, 1840
I want you out of the country and out of my life forever, you and your German bitch. You are no son of mine.’ So said the red-faced, pompous, overweight bank manager who regarded his standing in the Swiss community as almost sacred. To have a son who, as an employee, had stolen from his peers was not only a disgrace, but beyond forgiveness.
‘I have purchased a one-way ticket to a new colony of Britain, one which is almost at the edge of the world, and which I am sure you will never return from to remind me of the disgrace you have brought upon the good family name.’
Augustus shuffled uncomfortably, ignoring the woman standing beside him who was endeavouring to hold his hand in order to obtain some small degree of comfort during the verbal onslaught. The chill in the winter air was barely noticeable during the angry barrage aimed at the young couple that December morning.
‘It is a country where opportunities exist if one puts one’s mind to the task,’ Augustus’s father sniffed and adjusted his monocle, ‘even for someone as lazy as you.’ He continued to pace up and down, hands behind his back. ‘I have therefore arranged for a reasonable sum to be deposited in the Bank of England which will assist you to become a new settler. I would remind you that this will be a one-off payment, and there will, under no circumstances, be any further monies, nor contact from myself. Is that clear?’
He raised his head to look at his son who stood defiantly in front of him. Augustus said nothing. ‘I sincerely hope that you will not waste this gift, but will put it to good use for your sake and for the sake of the family name, which you seem to take little pride in. That is all.’ He nodded to the frail looking woman who had sat demurely on the sofa during the occasion and who had said nothing, whereupon she rose gracefully and followed him from the room.
Augustus had a vague idea of where New Zealand was located from his private history lessons, but knew little else since he had been a poor student at best.
It was a long and uncomfortable journey that lasted more than six months. His wife, Wilhelmina, was no sailor, having spent most of her life in Berlin, much of it on her back with her ample thighs parted to welcome her rich and aristocratic customers. Augustus had been one of her most ardent admirers at her private establishment and thought himself to be in love.
She was, however, becoming like a wilted flower, beginning to lose her colour and her fragrance and, as she was approaching her thirtieth year, was eager to accept a proposal of marriage from this handsome Swiss banker’s son and heir. To her, this was a ticket to freedom and a new life with the children she had always wanted, but had had to be careful to avoid. However, instead of the life of a lady, she now found herself on board a sailing ship, miles away from family and friends, and suffering sea sickness and diarrhea.
Augustus prayed for forgiveness – the thought of life in an unknown country, an island no less, filled his heart with dread. A million questions raced around in his mind like some kind of out of control kaleidoscope as he sought to decide what direction he would take when they finally arrived at their destination. The fact that Wilhelmina had presented him with the news that she was pregnant did little to cheer him.
The only comfort he found was at the bottom of a rum bottle, the raw spirit being bought for a few pence from the bosun. Unknown to Augustus, he had sown the seeds of an alcoholism that would blossom in his offspring for generations to come.
Ireland, 1834
‘Tis a miserable country, it is.’
Patrick Malone gazed out upon a leaden sky from his local pub in Cork. He had left County Clare a few months past in an endeavour to find better paid work and had managed to land a labourer’s job on the local wharf.
‘What’ll ye be backing this Saturday?’ asked his companion who was known as a bookie’s runner.
‘Dunno,’ Patrick returned glumly. ‘I’ve no been havin’ much luck with the nags lately ... about as much fortune as I’ve had with the ladies. Here am I at twenty-two years of age and not yet tasted the fruits of the sex blossom, though I fantasise about it enough with only me cold hand under the blankets as comfort. Sure and if I could win a sizeable amount, I’d be on the first ship to Australia and away from this bloody miserable rain day in, day out.’
The next day was Saturday and, for some reason, God answered Pa-trick’s prayers, at least about the races, for his punt on a rank outsider saw him rejoice with gusto and, true to his word, booked passage on Her Majesty’s sloop Enterprise bound for Botany Bay.
However, Australia with its hot dry climate and lack of adequate lodgings found him making his way across the Tasman to the greener landscape of New Zealand where, within a few months, he had met and married Mary, a good Catholic school teacher whose sexual appetites matched his own.
CHAPTER 1
ANCESTORS
Mick Malone was seventy-two when he fell over the cliff. He had been travelling along the highway of the dreamer with fantasy and illusion as his companions when he stumbled. It didn’t seem like a long way down before he hit the bottom … the only major injury being a rather badly bruised ego.
‘Jesus,’ Mick swore, forgetting to bless himself. ‘You mean to say that one day I’m gonna die!’ The thought had never occurred to him even though the specialist had informed him three years previously that he had a damaged aorta and may have to undergo surgery in order to fix his heart.
Each year following the original diagnosis he had gone to the local hospital for a check-up and each year he’d earned a reprieve. That was until this year when just after his seventy-third birthday he was told that his condition had deteriorated and six monthly reviews would be necessary.
His family doctor hadn’t made him feel any better when he’d told Mick there would be no warning signs such as chest pains. ‘One day, it will simply stop,’ the doctor, in a very matter of fact manner, had told him. ‘The purpose of regular check-ups is to try to determine when to oper-ate.’
Mick remembered boasting to his wife when he was aged about six-ty-two that he would live forever. What’s more, he’d really believed it.
Such is the power of the world of fantasy where nothing is impossible. It was a world into which Mick had escaped in order to protect himself from further heartache: a world to which only he belonged. It was safe in this bubble of contentment – he had banished the past, forbidden thoughts to enter and never permitted the future to visit.
Maybe this was the legacy of a lonely childhood where the Grimms’ Fairy Tales had become his substitute parents; or of his Irish heritage of being orphaned by the seeds of ignorance and sin.
Mick now found himself on a new road – the bumpy highway of reality – and he didn’t like the scenery that surrounded him. Ears which once had been closed to rumours of sickness and death were slowly opening and he could do nothing to stop the gossip.
He saw old people hobbling and pushing those ridiculous wheeled frames to prevent them from falling and he seemed to notice, more than ever, that now he was indeed a senior citizen and not some rejuvenated Don Juan.
Added to the heart problem came the news that he had bugger-all cartilage left in his knees … even walking had become a burden. Mick had always been a walker, even when he was a smoker. He’d exercised daily because some expert had told him that walking was good for the heart – bullshit!
‘Wear and tear,’ the doctor had told him. ‘We all come to that point in time, so you just have to cop it sweet.’
Bugger! thought Mick. He saw life as a highway full of milestones. The milestones were becoming further apart and were only dim in the fog of the past.
He found himself not only trying to recall those of significance, but also wondering when the last one would appear … not a milestone, but a tombstone. He recalled telling his second wife (who he’d thought of as his soul-mate) that his ambition was to travel the world and die at the age of eighty-six in the arms of a woman. She had replied, ‘I hope I’m not that woman.’
But Mick, the dreamer, had extended that wish deciding he wanted to live to be a hundred and maybe even beyond that lofty goal.
Fantasy, however, is the great fairy and her nemesis is the ogre named Reality and Mick now had to face him … to give in or to do battle? Mick didn’t like the former option. There were many countries he wanted to visit, books to write and past wounds to heal.
No! He wasn’t ready to go just yet with so much unfinished business, yet he needed to know why. Why he was here on Earth and what was his purpose? He had many theories but the answers lay hidden deep in his soul and Mick had never been very good at puzzles.
Anyway … what was a soul?
He thought he knew, but thoughts had got him into trouble in the past, which is why he’d locked them out for so many years. He’d hidden in a self-created fantasy land. Now some bugger had opened the door and he felt the naked wind of truth plucking at his heartstrings … what was that melody?
Perhaps it was the ballad of the ancestors warning him that one day he would become one of them.
Of the many and colourful races on Earth, some prayed to their ancestors for guidance. Others pinned their faith on that equally invisible mysterious male entity who appeared to various religions in different forms. All seemed to acknowledge that this ‘Big Daddy’ should be known by the title of God who was so powerful he knew everything that happened on Earth and who was responsible for life and death, reward and punishment, heaven and hell and the ultimate mysterious destination of bliss.
Mick Malone had had a few of his prayers answered by this unseen magician, but many had been ignored (no doubt because God had so many to deal with) and the big one about ‘love’ still eluded him. For Mick Malone, finding love was like discovering the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and rainbows had been few and far between in his life.
The years were flying by and each time Mick thought that he had dis-covered the elusive treasure his dream would fade into the mists of time as if stolen by some mischievous imp. The rainbow would fade when the clouds rolled by while the sun appeared to suck up the remaining few drops of hope.
Would he have to spend the rest of his life searching for the enveloping arms of some princess who could satisfy his thirst for this mysterious invisible nectar; or settle for being just another dirty old man being fleeced by money hungry harlots who could offer only temporary relief for the ache in his heart before moving on to other wilting flowers?
Mick didn’t have a crystal ball to help him delve into the future but was still clinging to that branch of the tree of knowledge he called ‘Hope’. Besides, he had inherited the genes of a dreamer (an incurable roman-tic) from his Irish heritage, the Malones. They had once lived in County Clare, a province well known for its storytellers and musicians. He had visited Ireland briefly when in his sixties but hadn’t found the time to investigate further into his past. Yet strangely, he’d felt at home amongst the rolling countryside of Southern Ireland and the lilting bro-gue of the locals. There were no particular ancestors he could have prayed to since that side of the family remained hidden from him, and there was no written legacy to tell him who they were or what they had contributed to the family tree.
Maybe he had derived his singing talent from some Irish balladeer, or his story-telling from some toothless crone whose only claim to fame was to have survived the persecution and hunger during the Great Famine. There really was no way of knowing– even when he had a brief look at his past lives, there was no indication that he had any artistic talent whatsoever. Indeed, in most of them he had been of warrior stock, bent on killing and pillaging and it was not until the 18th century that he had decided to put an end to warring and embraced a more peaceful life in his next visit to Earth.
He’d once had a Chinese business partner who did not believe in a God but prayed to his ancestors for guidance. This had seemed to work for him – he was wealthy and successful, though Mick never heard the word ‘love’ mentioned. The partnership didn’t last long because the fellow kept cutting prices and forgoing a healthy profit in order to ‘save face’ (as he put it) when dealing with more wealthy clients.
Anyway, Mick thought, I wouldn’t know who to pray to in the way of ancestors. There was no family album of past heritage apart from a photograph of a couple of stern looking great-grandparents, and a search of the family tree revealed no one of significance – farmers, a few priests, a banker or two, but most were of peasant stock with no evidence of heroes or the gentry.
He found himself wondering what influence his ancestors had on his personality and which of the many nationalities in the patchwork quilt of his background were more prevalent. Sometimes he thought it was the French: the blood of the Huguenots was in the blend and he carried with him a sense of romance. At the same time, he seethed at any form of injustice, religious or otherwise. There was German influence as well which emerged in him as a fellow who liked efficiency and punctuality. A touch of English spice gave him a desire for fair play in business as well as in his private life – a kind of code of ethics. These were attributes which were built in, so to say. He’d learned none of these skills from a drunken father, nor from a complacent mother.
He had no knowledge of his grandfather or grandmother on either side; no haven to run to when he was mercilessly beaten for some minor misdemeanour and the word ‘love’ was never to float in the air of his early childhood.
‘Must have been a sinner in me past life,’ Mick muttered to himself, pushing aside the temptation to have just one little drink. He’d passed his three score years and ten by three, so each year was a bonus. Still, there were many questions unanswered about his life and, indeed, life in general. Maybe men did this when they arrived at his age – looked back on life in order to make some kind of sense of the whole journey. He could recall doing something similar at the age of forty when a man was deemed to be ‘over the hill’ and the road ahead was all down, down, down to some unknown destination.
Mick felt no empathy towards the British or the Germans but found himself romancing about the French and when fortunate enough to visit that country, he felt very much at home. During his time there he’d learned a certain amount of history about his Huguenot ancestors, a clan who resisted the dogma and bureaucracy of the Church of Rome and who were, in fact, the first early Protestants.
They were tradesmen, these Huguenots: stonemasons, carpenters and blacksmiths – and sure, wasn’t it in Mick’s mind as a six-year-old to be-come a carpenter? Where did that idea come from? Was it some distant memory from another time, or a gentle guidance from a long-gone relative? This was a time when the Church of Rome was all-powerful and when anyone not converting to Catholicism was punished.
The crusaders, Mick discovered, were not the knights in shining armour he’d wanted them to be, but were mercenaries who carried out slaughter when ordered by the reigning Pope. No love there, he decided, but probably plenty of sex. So who was to be held responsible? God? … Mick was still trying to decide if God existed. There was a pinch of arrogance in Mick Malone which also might have come from the French, yet the blood of the naïve dreamer and the luck of the Irish flowed strongly in his veins.
In history lessons about those times, he had discovered that there were three major players in society: the King, the Hero and the Storyteller. He doubted that had he lived in those times he would have been a king. Kings were thieves and murderers, coming into their fortunes not by good luck, wisdom and fair rule, but by violence and greed, and were constantly at war with other kings. Heroes were no better – if the King died in battle, often the hero did so too, usually through endeavouring to save his master.
No, Mick mused. If he had been unfortunate enough to have been born into such a period, then he would most certainly have been a storyteller.
Kings were dethroned; heroes always died in battle; storytellers lived on recording their glory in verse or in song, and giving comfort to hot-blooded widows who no longer had a man to service their needs. Ah – sex is for sinners!
If he had one regret, Mick thought, as he lay back in his bed one Sunday morning, it was that he had not inherited a weapon as big as his father’s, and longer legs. Half the size in every department was unfair, Mick reckoned, as he had witnessed youths with appendages much larger than his own, but in some cases they were no taller. Yet what he lacked in size, he made up for in bravery and was never short of a few words where the ladies were concerned.
Many races, he knew, worshipped their ancestors and gave no credence to God, and he wondered if their prayers were ever answered … few of his ever seemed to get through. Why couldn’t one summon the ghosts from the past for tuition and guidance in this lifetime? There had been no voluptuous grandmothers who’d taken him to their bosoms as a youth and explained what exactly lay beneath a young girl’s skirts, nor any grandfathers or wayward uncles to enlighten a young man about the art of love-making.
Were his ancestors ardent lovers or grunting labourers taking their pleasure on farm wenches from behind, like a mongrel dog? There was no family dossier where ancestors had recorded their thoughts about the life they’d led on Mother Earth. More’s the pity, thought Mick, as he cast his mind back to his early teaching from a whisky smelling old priest who hurried his instructions so he could get away for another smoke and a pint of grumbler’s ale. Mick’s paternal grandmother had died after giving birth to her thirteenth child. On his mother’s branch of the family, her guardian had left the planet in her mid-fifties, leaving his mother without support. She had been the result of an affair in which the father’s name was a well-kept secret.
‘We inherit the principal defects handed down from generation to generation,’ Mick said aloud to no one in particular, ‘like arthritis and alcoholism – but what about the good genes? What about sex?’
He tried to imagine his mother and father in the act of copulation but could not bring forth any kind of mind picture. His great-grandfather was of French heritage, though born in Switzerland; his great-grandmother was pure German and built like a battleship. He could remember being shown photos of them but couldn’t imagine them ‘doing it’.
He wondered if sex had been called sex in the Middle Ages or by some other more colourful adjective. He had read somewhere that the penis was once called a sword, a shaft and in Ireland, a willy. Did the knights in shining armour really fall in love or was the act of fornication simply raw lust? He’d also read that early model condoms were made from pigs’ intestines, yet he could not visualise a knight or a labourer bothering to take the time to tie on a slippery sausage skin when consumed with lust and a fully erect love muscle.
He supposed that his mother and father (now deceased) were his ancestors, yet could not imagine offering up prayers for guidance to either of them. Aunts and uncles were but dim shadows in his background and were never an influence on his life then or now. Neither were the black frocked priests or demure nuns prepared to discuss the subject of sex. To even think about fornication was to have sinned, according to his Sunday missal. ‘Love God – that’s your purpose in life,’ he was warned. ‘Serve him and none other so you can be happy with Him in the next world.’ But what about this one?
As a young man, he would ultimately be thrust into a field of flowering maidens with never a clue as to how to get laid. ‘You’ll find out about sex when you get married,’ were the only pearls of wisdom to dribble from his father’s lips. ‘And make sure she’s Catholic,’ his mother added. ‘Find yourself a good Catholic girl and settle down with a government job.’ He didn’t take the advice, of course, but married a Presbyterian out of the Church in order to get his seeds sown.
‘Sex is for sinners and love is for leprechauns,’ he thought as he looked back on a dismal track record. Of his progeny, one had attempted suicide, one had experienced a nervous breakdown and the other became an alcoholic – just like his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. Was God punishing him for his sins of fornication, lust and wanting sex instead of waiting for love? If so, why him? Surely the world was full of sinners who never loved but only lusted after female flesh.
Mick had recently developed gout. This he blamed not on having been a bit of a boozer most of his life, but on it being the only inheritance he had received from his parents and, to make matters worse, it was through his mother’s genes that this pain had been passed on. On the one day he met his father’s father, he saw evidence of excessive drinking – the old man had to use two walking sticks to keep upright and he moved at a snail’s pace.
What part do genetics play in one’s life, he wondered. Apart from the odd ache, Mick had been healthy all his life. Not fit, he admitted, but healthy enough considering that he had given up the drink and pumped into his body a cocktail of vitamins each morning after a walk and a swim. Was this continuing ache in his little toe and ankle penance for renewing his sex life (albeit only once a week)?
Sex is for sinners! He’d talked to his doctor about his poor performance and inability to maintain a stiff member, but had yet to try the Viagra which lay in sample packs in the cupboard alongside the vitamin pills and Panadol. Somehow he managed to satisfy his partner and wondered if his French background came into play when he became involved with a woman’s body.
Mick was still trying to come to terms with the copulations in as much as he thought it was sex, but was supposed to be making love in a kind of celestial factory. He didn’t have the raw passion of a twenty-year-old, nor the staying power of a forty something gigolo. Then again, he couldn’t run now either, so it had to have something to do with age. Sure, and didn’t he recall Jesus saying something about the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak? Maybe He wasn’t strictly talking about sex, but then perhaps He was. After all, He was a man and a Capricornian (who are rather horny types according to the astrological experts). The Creator should have put a bone in it and then men wouldn’t have to put up with the embarrassment of impotence. As he often joked to his workmates, ‘What once was a repeater is now a water pistol.’
Male life expectancy was increasing and provided one had regular heart check-ups, blood tests for cholesterol and prostate problems, ate organic, exercised regularly, meditated, activated, orchestrated and copulated, there was every chance that one could live to a hundred and more.
Mick had no way of checking his ancestors’ genetic history, but could not remember either of his parents being ill. His father passed on at eighty-two from a lung related disease as a result of smoking. His moth-er died of a similar complaint, though a cigarette never touched her lips – she was eighty-three. Father was a boozer and mother managed a half-strength Pimms No. 1 at Christmas. They seldom visited a doctor, had sex once a year and thought meditation was some kind of church penance. Father believed in hell but mother didn’t, and though she had married him in the Catholic church, promising to bring up any offspring in that religion, she never took communion and only went to mass when ‘that nice young Irish priest’ was giving a sermon. Mick doubted that either of them had experienced sex before they married simply because his father would have feared going to confession and his mother would have been too shy. Even as a mature woman she never was heard to utter the word vagina. It was always referred to as ‘down there’ without even a finger to point out ‘its’ exact location.
Mick’s sister at about puberty time was having ‘ovary problems’ whilst Mick’s wet dreams were never mentioned. Later in life he thought that his mother must have wondered about the stiff glue-like stains on the sheets once a month. So much for the pearls of wisdom passed on by the ancestors. He felt sometimes like a traveller lost in the deserts of ignorance without a water-bottle.
Ah well, Mick thought, as he awoke yet again at 4.30 am knowing he wouldn’t go back to sleep … another day, another dollar. He tested his knees and found the usual arthritic twinge, put on the support bandage, dressed in shorts and T-shirt and headed for the beach.
CHAPTER 2
WELCOME TO PLANET EARTH – 1934
I hear you’ve got a son and heir, Frank.’
The burly railway worker nodded to the barmaid to fill his workmate’s glass again. ‘My shout, then maybe a game of euchre so I can get a chance to win some money back. Whadaya say Frank?’
Frank’s eyes were already glazed from too many pints and he muttered a slurred thank you along with some grumbling about ‘another mouth to feed and us in the middle of a depression.’ He had a habit of putting his left hand on his hip when he downed the dark ale – something Mick had found himself doing from time to time, but had quickly stopped. He had no desire to be like his father.
The rain was pounding down as it usually did for five days out of seven and Mick’s dad was well aware that the hands of the clock were approaching closing time. The six o’clock swill they called it. Workers from all walks of life lined the bar three or four deep in order to get last drinks before the long arm of the law appeared to announce, ‘time gentlemen, please.’ The publican would often have to shout over the alcoholic hum of conversation between sweating and often uncouth men who had little other release for their pent up emotions. Constable Smith had been promoted and was now to be called Sergeant Smythe, an announcement which brought laughter from railway workers and miners alike when Mrs Murphy, the publican, told the sergeant that ‘Shit and Shyte were both alike.’
The port at the mouth of the Grey River had once been a busy place. Not far away, gold had been discovered in the remote and dismal province of the west coast of Britain’s youngest colony. At one time as many as fifty pubs had sprung up parallel to the wharves where the many sailing ships trading from Mother England loaded and unloaded.
Mick’s dad had spent his early years on his father’s farm but had left when his mother passed away. He’d isolated himself in one of the many tiny townships that housed only a store, a few huts and a sawmill.
It was at a country dance where he had met Mick’s mother. She had also been abandoned by a death. Cast out from the comfort of her family home and the life of a lady, she had accepted charity from a matronly aunt who had put her to work in the kitchen of their dairy farm. Paula was not happy and the thought of marriage to this handsome Catholic man seemed a better option than spending her days as a maid servant.
Mick wondered if they had been in love or just plain lonely. As he’d grown older, he looked at his parents as people and thought them to be an odd couple – not at all suited. But who was he to question suitability? When he was being beaten, he’d wondered if either of them knew what the word love really meant.
It was 4.35 in the afternoon when Mick came into the world and, as a Sunday child, was supposed to be ‘blithe and bonny, happy and gay.’ All of those, considered Mick, though in the 21st century to be gay was to be homosexual, which he wasn’t, but he’d once been told by an analyst that he missed being one by a very narrow margin.
‘What do you mean, you don’t want to see your son?’ sniffed the pompous looking nursing sister who held Mick in her arms. ‘He’s a beautiful child, looks like a little angel.’
However, angels seldom weighed in at more than eight pounds and Mick’s mother being a petite wee soul had probably undergone a hard time with the delivery – a fact born out when later in life Mick went back in time to revisit his birth.
‘Keep trying … keep trying.’
These words were indelibly stamped on his mind as a constant reminder of the effort made in bringing him into the world on that cold frosty August day.
‘He’s a hungry one,’ cooed the nurse, but his mother flatly refused to have him suckle her ample breasts and so, as a babe, he was raised for the first few days by another woman who had milk to spare. Mick sometimes wondered if that was why he had an obsession with breasts and was to spend the rest of his days searching for that donor who’d taken pity on him.
‘I don’t want to have any more babies,’ Paula told her husband soon after her return to the tiny rented cottage. ‘I don’t care what the Pope says. I’ll not be goin’ through that again.’ Frank muttered something under his beery breath and poured another pint of grumbler’s ale from his demijohn. Mick’s sister, Louise, glared at all three from the corner of the room where she had been feeding a stray cat. What little attention she’d had from her parents during the past five years was beginning to further dwindle with the arrival of her brother.
Mick didn’t remember being circumcised, but then he didn’t remember many things before the age of four. As a middle-aged man, when he endeavoured to recreate a picture of himself as a young lad, he could only conjure up scraps of memories and those were few and far between.
The family had lived in a small two bedroom cottage built in the early 1900s, with paper thin walls and no electricity. The only heating came from the coal range in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room – the latter lit only on special occasions such as the Sundays when the local priest visited seeking sinners and donations for the church. Mother would ceremoniously open the china cabinet with great care and bring out the delicate cups decorated with flowers that held little more than a few mouthfuls of tea. These occasions were the only ones on which she could play ‘ladies’ and she always made the most of it, proudly displaying a variety of cakes on similarly decorated plates.
The homemade butter churned by Mick once a week from cream generously donated from their one and only Jersey cow was never to his liking. He much preferred the pale slabs they had from time to time when the cow was not giving much milk, or when his father demanded cream on his Sunday apple pie.
Mick could remember his first thrashing as he cast his thoughts back. He’d been playing on the old rope swing in the paddock where Daisy fed and had forgotten to close the gate to their backyard where his father had spent many an hour after his day job growing vegetables for the family. Daisy had smelt the fresh ripe cabbages and not only consumed most of them but also nearly destroyed the other fruit with her oversized hoofs.
His father was livid. Fuelled with more than a few pints, he administered some very heavy punishment until at last Mick’s mother intervened telling her spouse, ‘That’s enough, Frank. You don’t want to kill the boy.’
No tears, no feeling, no fear. Just a statement of fact, Mick observed, as he ran the old movie theme through his mind. Had she been incapable of love? He never knew … there was little conversation as a family other than about what Frank had done at work, or how much he’d won playing cards at the pub.
‘Your father’s a good man,’ he was often told by his mother – usually after a thrashing. ‘He works hard and gives us all a roof over our heads and three meals a day, so be grateful.’
Be grateful! Mick fumed silently at the memory. Be grateful for burnt lumpy porridge and a clip over the ear for talking at the table … for roast spuds undercooked and meat which was either burnt to a crisp or warm with the blood still oozing out of it. Paula had tried to feed them with only a temperamental coal range for equipment. Some coal burnt fast, some slow. It depended on what was cheapest or what Frank could pick up from the rail line which stole its way past their house, mysteriously tempting young Mick to follow it into the haze in the distance where perhaps a better life existed.
The year 1939 came and with it, talk of war … the announcement spluttering over the ancient battery-powered radio which was only turned on so that Mick’s dad could listen to the news from the BBC in London. Apart from that, there was little conversation that included him and Louise. They were constantly reminded to be seen but not heard, as was the way in most families at the time.
Mick and Louise slept in the same room. Their beds were bloody un-comfortable. They consisted of kapok that had a habit of forming into lumps. The luxury of feather mattresses or innersprings was reserved for the two adults and it was many years down the track before he tasted such comfort.
Mick was nearing school age when he was first taught by his father to lie. His mother had gone off on a shopping expedition by train and Louise had travelled the same route to attend the closest convent where it was hoped she would consider becoming a nun. The local priest guaranteed a place in heaven for Mick’s parents if this came to pass.
His father had reluctantly agreed to take him to work on the petrol-powered motor jigger which the railway workers travelled on as they maintained the tracks. Mick loved the clickety clack of the wheels, the wind blowing in his snowy hair and the cool smell of the countryside.
The day was uneventful … but the late afternoon saw a change in tempo. Settled on a rough wooden bench outside the local pub, Mick knew nothing of what went on behind the crude timber doors. He sipped his sarsaparilla, which was his absolute favourite beverage, while his father played cards. His dad was a keen player who had an instinctive way of guessing the other player’s hand.
An hour went by and Mick began to get restless. He wandered into the bar just in time to see his father being dragged down the hall towards the bathroom. ‘Sorry son,’ whispered the publican’s wife, ‘but your dad had a bit of a fight and this gentleman knocked him out,’ she said pointing to a young stranger at the bar. Mick rushed at the man who had a stupid grin on his face and began to kick him in the shins. Someone grabbed Mick from behind and pinned his arms to his sides until he calmed down.
Soon afterwards, his guardian appeared looking a bit silly with his wet hair plastered over his forehead and a big lump of skin hanging from his over-large Roman nose where the blow had landed. Mumbling some-thing to the barmaid, Frank handed over to his son the largest block of chocolate he’d seen with these words of warning, ‘Don’t tell your mother about the fight, son. Tell her I fell over.’
Being only four years old going on five, the boy naturally did as he was told and the incident was soon forgotten. Yet when he looked back at the event as an adult, he considered the whole affair most distasteful as a couple of days later he’d received yet another beating for some minor offence.
‘No love there,’ sighed Mick as he polished off another glass of Australian shiraz.
The local priest, a fat man with a red face and body odour, was the only teacher the boy had before he went to school and then all he learned was to love God above all things and that he was on Earth to serve this God so that he could eventually go and live with ‘Him’ and be forever happy in heaven. He was told that God had a little black book and a little white book in which He marked down the bad deeds and the good deeds; that if he were very good, he would go to heaven, but if he were naughty, he’d go to hell where he would burn … forever.
Forever didn’t really mean much to a five-year-old … but the burning did. Mick knew how hot the old coal range could get, and even how hot the open fire became in their tiny living room where they made toast in front of the dying embers.
Mick took another sip of red and thought to himself that his mother and father were now his ancestors but, unlike some races who prayed to their departed parents, he couldn’t bring himself to ask advice from a man he had no respect for, nor from a woman who never told him he was loved. His father never apologised for the beatings and his mother never interfered – so he reckoned that if he did get to heaven and they were waiting to greet him, he’d give them a mouthful about how much damage they’d done in those early formative years.
‘Ah, but then,’ he thought out loud, ‘I don’t suppose it was really their fault that they hadn’t been taught how to raise a family.’
Almost everyone beat their children. Women put up with drunken husbands and unsatisfying sex. Religions were divided, and God was a man. So it was in the 1930s. Now, in a new century, not much had changed except that child abuse had receded to some extent, women got drunk along with their male partners and if a woman couldn’t achieve orgasm with one partner, she could change to another.
Religion was not only still divided but was disintegrating in the wake of the exposure of corruption and pedophilia.
As a five-year-old, Mick had received some affection from the woman who lived in the farmhouse a short distance from their tired little railway cottage. She had two daughters, but no little boy, and she often showered him with cuddles and cakes, much to the envy of his sister and the two other girls who were about her age.
‘Mrs Palmer’s pet pig,’ they teased, but he didn’t mind. Many was the day when before going to school he’d visit the kitchen of the buxom lady to help make cakes while her husband was out tending to their dairy herd in the damp and chilly climate beneath low, grey and threatening clouds which seemed to forever hang down as if suspended by an unseen evil hand.
Mr Palmer was jealous of the attention given to young Mick – if he ever came near, he’d take the razor sharp butcher’s knife from its leather pouch and threaten to cut off his ears and nail them to the floor.
Such a threat would send Mick screaming off over paddocks filled with cow patties and mushrooms until he could find sanctuary under the moth-eaten quilt of his sagging bed. Even at that tender age Mick had a knack of being able to visualise. The thought of his pair of ‘pinkies’ gracing the kitchen floor did not sit well with him. On one occasion, he was sampling the latest batch of fairy cakes when he heard the ominous thump! thump! thump! of Mr Palmer’s boots on the back verandah coming home mid-morning for the lunch box he had forgotten to take with him. Terrified, Mick hid under the dining room table which, fortunately, had been covered with a large velvet cloth that reached nearly to the floor. Heart pounding, he had to wait for more than an hour while the farmer told his wife about the fly-blown cow he’d discovered down by the creek.
Mick didn’t go back for weeks after that, scared that he just might get caught with his hand in the cookie jar and, even worse – the farmer may have upped the ante and reckoned that besides his ears coming off, he’d whack off his willy as well.
So Mick became like the Artful Dodger … and something of a commando, sussing out the territory before he went out on sorties.
It was a dreary time, Mick thought, though in wonderment of how the mind could remember such things – like some kind of mystical telescope. Women’s dresses, which nearly reached the ankles, matched the long faces … and men’s britches (rough and ill-fitting) had nothing as sophisticated as a zipper for fast access. Boys’ knickers were simply serviced with a small slit which one couldn’t get into with a pudgy hand and so had to drag one’s ‘willy’ from the trouser leg – an act which usually ended with a few dribbles down the leg. Mick hated wearing braces on his pants – if a button popped, there was nothing left to hold them up; and because belts were not common, there were no belt loops either.
As he gazed back on the memories, he realised his father was never happy. He’d only smiled occasionally, generally after a few pints … and his mother, she was serious because she was poor and couldn’t live the life of a lady as she had been accustomed to. Louise, who was five years his senior, only giggled when she could play some mischievous trick on him like telling him to stand on a honey bee to get a surprise, or hear his screams as she chased him with a daddy-longlegs. She even (as she confessed much later in life) tried to get him to jump off the fowl-house roof backwards, hoping he might break his neck – such was the sibling rivalry of which he was blissfully unaware at the time.
As a young boy he lived in his own little world. His friends were the fairies in the magic mushroom rings, the big bumble bees which seemed to be attracted to his bright blue overalls and a couple of tattered cloth fantasy tales which he still remembered. Maybe they’d had an influence on his life as they were the only ones available until his tenth birthday when he was introduced to Winnie the Pooh and Grimms’ Fairy Tales. His favourite of the two early tales was The Little Red Hen; he found Jack and the Beanstalk a bit too far-fetched (none of their hens ever laid golden eggs).
Strange, he thought, noticing that the bottle was empty, that he should remember two stories about fowls, and now here he was sixty-five years later, trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. It was very philosophical: the thought that the little red hen’s life was a bit like his own.
It was a tale about a hen and her two chicks that lived in a farmyard with all sorts of other animals. One day she found a grain of wheat and went around the farm trying to find another animal to help her to till the land so that she could sow the wheat … no help was forthcoming, so with the aid of her chicks she did it herself. Then she needed help to sow the wheat, but again there was no other assistance. It was the same when it came to the harvesting, the grinding, the making of the dough and the baking of the bread … no help at all. Yet when she had finally succeeded and asked who would help her to eat the bread, the whole farmyard wanted a slice. Instead of sharing, she decided to have the whole loaf for herself and her chicks.
Bit of a moral in that story, Mick decided, but he’d given up on the magic beans and the hen that laid the golden eggs, and he’d even sometimes kept the penny his father gave him to put into the collection box at Sunday mass, secretly planning to run away when he had saved enough money.
His father would more often than not come home late and drunk on Thursdays, which was pay day. With no electricity and only a few candles for light, mother would commandeer the single kerosene lamp to read her magazines while she waited for her partner. Mick and his sister were sent to bed straight after dinner. They would spend the time silently praying to God that they would not be dragged from their beds to be soundly thrashed for some minor misdemeanour that had annoyed their mother during the day.
‘Stop blubbering,’ his father would warn after Mick had been beaten, ‘or I’ll give you something to really cry about.’
‘Incredible,’ thought Mick as if he could still feel the pain. ‘There I was, two foot nothing, being beaten up by a six foot tall angry bull of a man expecting me to be quiet. It wouldn’t happen today, that’s for sure – he’d be off to the police quick smart.’ But that was then and this was now and the nearest constabulary in those days was hundreds of kilometres away.
Then the bugger would go off to church as pious as you like before heading to the pub again to drink with his mates and, more often than not, the priest would be there as well.
Motor cars were for the rich back then. Most owned a bicycle in the late 1930s with war looming on a not too distant horizon. Condoms were called French letters; women had their hair permed; the mass was (apart from the sermon) said in Latin and every word, except in prayer, was a sin according to the information in the missal.
Mick was five when the family moved from the wet west coast to the dry plains of Canterbury, a new school, electricity and an awareness that Catholics were different to Protestants. He was never sure if he were picked on because he seemed small for his age, or because he was shy and a ‘Micky Doolin’ (Catholic) to boot, but he had made no friends other than the girls he was forced to go to catechism with on Saturday afternoons. He was in awe of the nuns who wore no make-up and showed nothing but face and hands from beneath their black habits, and what’s more, he had to call them ‘sister’. He already had a sister – and his mother was nothing like the Mother Superior who headed the convent of the Sacred Heart.
Words were very confusing back then, Mick decided, as he fought the temptation to open another bottle … like screwing was when a carpenter wanted to join two pieces of wood together, and a prick was when you got a thorn in your foot. Gay was to be happy, and erections were associated with crane companies and steeplejacks. A nut was something you ate, and to say bugger earned a penance of at least ten Hail Marys, all of which was very confusing for a young boy.
I suppose that was my first milestone, Mick thought to himself – moving to a new location; or perhaps it was starting school just before the family moved. That memory was far more vivid than the train journey.
His sister, Louise, had put fear into his heart when she warned him that the teacher often beat the children with a leather strap. She was also angry at having to take him to school on his first day – a duty she’d considered to be that of her parents. With father at work and mother complaining about having to milk the cow and make the butter, there was no alternative.
She delighted in tormenting him with spiders and ghost stories, silently smirking as he squirmed in wideeyed fear as his imagination took over his immature mind. Mick was so terrified at the sight of the long pair of teacher’s legs (his torso being hidden behind a blackboard and easel) that he pissed his pants.
Louise was furious and ashamed when she introduced her young brother to Mr Duncan, the sole teacher, who looked with disgust at the widening puddle on his classroom floor. With no mother to run to and the train to take them home not due for another six hours, Mick suffered a miserable introduction into learning the three Rs.
Fear has a huge impact on one’s life, Mick reckoned.
As a young boy, he was afraid of his father, his sister, the church, school, telling even the tiniest lie, hell and the other kids he had to come into contact with every day. Mick couldn’t help wondering if his life would have been different if he’d had a different mother and father.
He was once told by somebody that we choose our parents before we decide to come to Earth, but somehow he reckoned that wasn’t quite the truth … and maybe that he’d been uncertain as to who to choose, taking his parents rather than missing out on getting a body to go with his soul.
He recalled missing the cool comfort of the west coast bush and the cookies made by Mrs Palmer. Adam and Annie, the two old pensioners, who lived in a one room tin shack a kilometre from his family’s railway cottage, he also missed. He’d missed the stories the old fellow told of the goldfields and fortunes made or lost, together with the assortment of boiled sweets Mrs Harris kept in a big glass jar.
He hadn’t missed Daisy, the Jersey cow, who’d delighted in chasing him with horns lowered when he was sent to fetch her for milking … but he’d missed Betty, the pretty daughter of Mrs Palmer, who he had kissed when he was only four.
Britain was at war and the nearby aerodrome played host to young men who were training to be pilots, so most days were disturbed by the drone of Harvard trainers as they made their circuit almost directly over the family’s two bedroom cottage. Mick’s mother was afraid his father would be called up for duty but fortunately, when examined, he was found to have flat feet and deemed not suitable to be an infantryman. Instead, he was given an armband and joined the ranks of the Home Guard, the ‘Dad’s Army of New Zealand’ … but Frank was no soldier and had trouble with rifle drill, often coming home with a bloodied nose which had made contact with the ancient Lee Enfield when trying to present arms.
‘Wasn’t his fault he had a big nose,’ chuckled Mick as he visualised his father trying to cope with rifle drill after a bellyful of beer. At school, trenches were dug and air raid drill practised once a week when a siren was sounded. Everyone would rush out and into the troughs with hands over their ears until the all-clear was sounded. No doubt the government had inherited the drill from Mother England, as it did with the school books and curriculum. Even the headmaster was British. He could have stepped right out of a copy of English Squire, where he was magically turned into flesh in order to teach the colonials, as they were called. Mr Booth looked like a retired army colonel and treated his ‘troops’ with a firm discipline and a large leather strap that was standard government issue along with the walnut desk and felt dusters.
Mick liked writing and art but hated maths because he couldn’t do the tricky questions such as, ‘If Johnny had twelve apples and Mary had six pears, how many quarters would there be if Johnny ate one apple and lost two?’ Maths tables were learned parrot fashion and even today, he could still do maths in his head – well, addition, subtraction, division and multiplication but nothing more complicated.
He desperately wanted to be an altar boy like his friend Bernard but was forbidden because he attended a public school – perhaps it was just as well. Louise told him that the priest had tried to put his hand up her skirt when she took him breakfast one Sunday morning. Mick would have kicked him in the shins like he had when his father was attacked. He had a strong desire to protect, even at seven years of age. His sister told their father about the incident but all she got for her trouble was a good thrashing for telling lies. She never entered the sanctuary behind the altar again but she still had to go to church every Sunday to ‘repent’. The priest moved to another parish and eventually became a bishop. So much for sin!
Mick didn’t have a close male friend, preferring the company of girls. He was an angelic looking blue-eyed, fair-haired boy with freckles and a ready smile. Being shy and polite, he soon made friends with the ladies in the small country town.
Their house backed on to a huge paddock that carried a stock of sheep in the winter and grew hay in the summer so this, among other areas, was his playground. He made a hut in the willow trees and sometimes hid in their air raid shelter when his father was the worse for drink. He played imaginary games in which he was always the hero, cut kindling wood for the stove and lit the copper for his mother once a week on washing days. The left-over water was used for the weekly bath with mother going first and Mick last. Often the water in which he had to bathe was dirtier than he was.