Small candle flames
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 10: Family Politics
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Marion Halligan
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Marion Halligan's biography and other articles by this writer
When I was four I had an urgent desire to go to Sunday School. I believe I nagged my parents about this. They didn't mind the idea but had no desire to take me. They'd been married in St Augustine's Church of England and I'd been christened there, but they weren't churchgoers. At weekends they were busy about the house. My father helped my mother do the washing, boiling the great heavy sheets in a gas copper, putting them through a hand wringer into tubs of clean cold water, the last one with blue added to make the white brilliant. And there was the new garden to make, the sand to remove, to two spades deep, and replace with soil so vegetables could be grown.
Auntie Min said she'd take me, not to the Church of England but the Methodists. They were half the distance away, at the top of Park Street hill, which seemed helpful. Auntie Min was a great aunt, visiting her sister, my grandma, whose children all lived within a stone's throw of one another – a nice picture, that – and all close to the sea. She had a job, I suppose you would call it; she was a lady's companion. She lived with a grand family: the Whites of Gartrell White, the cake and biscuit people. It wasn't very clear what the job was. The role seemed more defined by what she didn't do: housekeeping, house cleaning (though perhaps she did a little light dusting), cooking (though possibly she made cups of tea), child-minding. Perhaps she changed library books. But mainly the job seemed to be exactly what it said: a companion to the lady of the house. I can't imagine Auntie Min being a brilliant conversationalist. I seem to recall her being evangelical, trying to convert us with threats of hell and my father resisting and there being arguments, which my mother hated.
So, Sunday morning. I am all dolled up and ready for Auntie Min to come and take me to Sunday School. I'm wearing a blue dress, the colour of cornflowers – not that I knew the word cornflower then; they didn't grow in our salty windy seaside suburb – with a panel down the front embroidered with white daisies, falling quite full from the shoulders and tied at the back with a sash and bow. It's rayon, so the fabric is silky; probably something my mother had in the dressmaking box. White socks, black shoes with straps, a hat made by Auntie Lou who is a milliner and works at Winn's department store.
Time passes. Auntie Min doesn't come. Nobody has a phone to find out why. I am devastated.
I NEVER FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED. I don't remember Auntie Min being around after that. She was probably quite old. My grandmother was in her mid-70s and Auntie Min was possibly older. It seems strange that there might never have been any reason given for her failing to turn up. Maybe the family fell out. Auntie Min didn't come and my parents were too proud to ask why but maybe they took offence. I think she almost immediately went back to Sydney. She seems so much unluckier than my grandmother, from the moment of naming: what sort of a name is Min? Where does it come from? My grandmother was Louisa Emily, she had six children and was beloved; one morning, when she was a healthy 96, she said, "I don't think I will get up today", and died.
Twenty years later, after my mother died, I found a letter Min wrote to her from a nursing home, a sad letter, full of complaint, especially about the woman who shared her room and had only one leg. This woman did not behave well, she wasn't religious. Auntie Min found this shocking. You'd think, the letter says, with one foot in the grave she would have had a better sense of the fitness of things. At that time, I thought, as I think now, about why I did not find out more about her, this woman like a put-upon character from an old novel – think of Becky Sharpe's chaperoning "sheepdog" in Vanity Fair – except Auntie Min seemed happy enough. She went on holidays with the White family and the children wrote her letters when they grew up, invited her to their weddings, showed her their children. How do I know these things, but not why she didn't come that Sunday morning?
I suppose I made a fuss. There still wasn't any question of my parents taking me to Sunday school. I said I could go on my own, I knew the way, my mother had taken me to a kindergarten there, pushing my sister up that steep hill in the yellow cane pram, me skipping along beside. Kindergarten was mysterious and exciting, full of strange people; there was a girl called Kay Giraffe who said I was spiceful – I'm sure I wasn't, shy certainly, silly probably, but not spiteful – and another called Hairnet who turned out to be Annette, and much later I found out that Kay was not Giraffe but Durack.
SO THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED: I WENT ON MY OWN, with a note from my father, no doubt in the rather flowery language he used later to impress teachers.
I was going to say my father wasn't religious but I've put instead that he wasn't a churchgoer. He had a questing mind and a longing soul and eventually became a Rosicrucian. He loved my mother and took great pleasure kissing her, morning and evening, going to and from work. That's how I learned about kissing. You're embarrassed, when you're young, that your father so clearly enjoys kissing your mother, but afterwards it is a very comfortable thing.
When I got to the church on the top of the hill, with its cavernous hall underneath, it was the Sunday School anniversary, a big day on the calendar, with lots of hymns practised for weeks before. People got book prizes according to their attendance through the year. They found one for me, doubtless feeling sorry for this four-year-old waif sent to Sunday School on her own. It was The Rocks of Han, by Pixie O'Harris; I loved it, still do. My copy is lost, but every now and then I go and read it in the National Library, a copy just like mine with some naughty coloured-pencil scribblings in it. It was a small book, flimsy, stapled, but the illustrations were fabulous and so was the narrative: Han is a fisherman who finds a mermaid, with fine black lines of curling hair long and full as a cloak, marooned in a pool; he captures her and keeps her in a tub, fetching sea water in buckets to keep her alive. It has witches and a beautiful Gypsy girl and romantic landscapes. And a happy ending.
I resolved that next year I would get a big book for a prize and I did. Though the big books were often didactic: lengthy tracts barely disguised. I became a diligent Methodist and apt in their ways. I learnt a great many hymns that they allowed me to sing though I couldn't, and I became thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. Methodists do not just quote the Bible, they give you chapter and verse, quite literally. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Gospel according to St John, Chapter One Verse One.
We had fun, too, especially in our teens, with camps and social evenings and fellowship teas. We weren't allowed to dance, but we played all sorts of lecherous games like spin the bottle and winks, which involved grabbing one another and hasty kisses. Dancing would have been more reticent. We weren't supposed to wear make-up either; all the women had pale powdery faces but not lipstick. We all got new smart clothes for the anniversary. I always prayed that it wouldn't rain so I wouldn't have to wear my boys' school shoes because of the walk up the hill. We never had a car.