Before I Sleep (5 page)

When I was fifteen I had been able to talk to Rosie in much the same way that I talked to my two mates. She was the only girl I knew with whom this was possible. Perhaps this was because Rosie had elder brothers. But it was a novel thought to me — that there were some females around who were capable of intelligent conversation. Later on, of course, when I met my future wife, Mavis, I was immediately attracted by the way in which she and her friend Gert and our group of final-year high school students were able to talk frankly and freely. And this was one of Mavis's attractions to me: here was somebody with whom I could talk and share my thoughts. I was able to articulate the things that were of interest to me and Mavis seemed to understand. But how she came by that ability, I don't really know, because there was only one boy in her family and he was four or five years younger. Perhaps it was something she picked up with her teacher training. All through our lives together, I was grateful for the way Mavis and I could talk and share our innermost thoughts, and luckily we tended to agree on the important, basic values and practices of life. Unfortunately this is a state of affairs that hasn't usually existed between me and the women I've met socially and professionally. When I was in Queensland I never felt I was capable of getting alongside the mentality of the young women I was recruiting for the police service. Of course they were a generation younger than me and they came from a different culture. These were strong barriers to my understanding. I never felt able to fully grasp what they were thinking and how they were likely to respond to my actions. I think this handicap of mine was partly responsible for my failure to convince them that they should join me in reforming the service. And, also perhaps, because they were junior and young — it was asking too much of them.

In my early years at Adelaide High School, my class teacher was an overbearing man who had obvious favourites, many of whom were older than me by one and sometimes two or three years. But then, in my fourth year, there was a change and Fred Burr took over as class teacher. He had a fierce black moustache, was about twenty-five, grinned often, showing his prominent front teeth, and dressed in a most casual manner. He discovered my interest in Marxist economics and went out of his way to foster it. In fact I had no exposure to real Marxist literature at all, but a fellow student had heard his father talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the nationalisation of the means of production and this was good enough for us. I'm not sure where Doug Kuss's family came from exactly, but it was somewhere in central Europe, perhaps Czechoslovakia. Doug had dark hair and glasses and seemed a bit different from the rest of us. Doug and I formed our two-man Marxist society more to annoy the teachers than anything else. But this interest was seized upon by Fred Burr. I got on well with him. I think that secretly he was “one of us” — neither Doug Kuss nor I got on very well with the headmaster and I don't think Fred Burr did either. It was a bit late for me to catch up with wasted studies but I did matriculate at sixteen with a credit in economics — the only one in Fred Burr's class to do so. Fifty years later, in retirement, he wrote in a first letter to me that he had noted that my initial university degree had been in economics and he was delighted to think he had encouraged my study of the subject.

I left school with my matriculation certificate and started to look for a job. The Great Depression was well established. I had thought of becoming a teacher, but recruitment for teacher training had been discontinued two years previously and without personal introductions it was impossible to find even a junior clerical position. After writing many letters of application, I secured a job as an office boy at the South Australian Paperbag Company in Leigh Street in the city. I was paid seven shillings and sixpence per week, of which I gave five shillings to my mother. I wasn't a very good office boy. My duties included dusting the boss's office every morning before he arrived, and delivering a large number of invoices and monthly statements on the firm's bike. This kept me busy. However, I twice left the bike in the lane alongside the office when I went to get fresh supplies of invoices. Unfortunately, leaving my bike in the narrow lane was forbidden because one of the partners could not get past in his large car. On the second occasion he scraped the wall and so it was time for me to leave.

The previous year had seen the unplanned break up of our group of lads at the Mission. All left school at age fourteen. Some found jobs as junior labourers in wool-scouring firms, sheet metal factories, or bakehouses; some went interstate hoping to find work. Along with one of my scout friends, Laurie Kitchener, who received support through Legacy, I moved up to the main church in Flinders Street to join its newly formed scout troop.

I can, with sincerity, begin this segment of these memoirs by repeating that traditional romantic phrase: “Long ago and far away I had a Dream one day.” It was quite long ago now — sixty seven years in fact — and “far away” in those motorless times that I met my future wife, Mavis Russell.

Just before I left school in September 1932, when I was nearly seventeen years of age, I went to Victor Harbour for a holiday. I had been teaching Sunday school at the Flinders Street Baptist Church and one of my fellow teachers was Brice Russell. With two of his friends, Brice and I set out to hike the 50 miles [80 kilometres] to the seaside holiday town. We took a train to the outskirts of Adelaide and started walking. I don't remember sleeping, I remember joking and laughing and carrying on as we walked. Twenty-four hours after leaving town we arrived. You can do that sort of thing when you are seventeen. The four of us shared an inexpensive bedroom in a boarding house for about a week. Brice and I were then in our Matriculation year at Adelaide High School. Brice's sister, Mavis, and her close friend, Gert, were also staying in Victor and we shared outings with them. My fairytale had begun and has continued to this day. Mavis and Gert had graduated three years earlier from the Adelaide Teachers College. Mavis was then teaching at a small country school in Tweedvale, some distance from the city. Neither of them appeared to be attached to a young man.

I can still recall that holiday together, Mavis was aged twenty-five and had blue eyes and fair hair, and wore casual clothes. She was active, healthy and had, to me, a most attractive personality. Privately I thought the other two non-sibling males in our party were either immature or stupid not to notice her obvious charm. But I was pleased, for their lack of interest in Mavis held no threat to our developing relationship.

By the end of the first couple of days I was already well on the way to thinking Mavis was the most wonderful person in the world. I remember how one morning the six of us went out in a fisherman's boat to check the cray pots. We all succumbed to seasickness. We returned to shore and slowly recovered. I was left impressed by the way in which Mavis responded to the situation. I had had little previous contact with girls and none of those I knew would have behaved in the manner she did. With an obvious absence of self-pity and complaints, she saw much humour in our predicament.

I discovered that Mavis shared my enjoyment of the poetry of Tennyson and Browning. Also, she was familiar with the work of the Reverend Leslie Weatherhead, an English psychologist, who had helped her, as he had me, to gain some understanding of the principles of Christianity. (There were those he hadn't helped, who regarded his teachings as anathema, and who referred to him as Leatherhead.) Brice and I had been teaching Sunday School at Flinders Street Church where Mavis and Brice's father was a deacon and their elder sister the superintendent of the Sunday School. My duties involved teaching my class of eleven-year-olds about a number of miracles — water turning into wine, a few loaves and fishes feeding a multitude, that sort of thing. I was beginning to doubt the absolute truth of the Bible and tended to skip through these parts of the curriculum as fast as possible. But I kept my doubts to myself— it was heresy at Flinders Street to regard the Bible as anything but the literal word of God. Brice seemed to have no doubts at all and his sister the superintendent had been no help when I'd tentatively raised a few questions about Biblical miracles. With Mavis, things were different: doubts and queries could be discussed openly. And Mavis didn't talk down to me, which I appreciated. She was the first teacher I had met who spoke to me as an equal. I immediately thought “here is someone on the same wave length as myself”. I enjoyed her company, for not only was she a person whom I admired, but she seemed to appreciate my jocular, male comments. As well, she appeared to give serious consideration to the odd theories I risked revealing in our discussions. Her interest was genuine, for there was no reason for her to seek out my company. I was young, still a secondary school student, a stage she had left well behind. I think that for a long time neither she nor her family saw me as a possible suitor. Yet since that holiday at Victor Harbour she had become the major influence in my life. I was unhappy when I was away from her so I exploited every opportunity to be in her company, and if possible, alone together.

When our holiday at Victor was over, Brice and I returned to school and Mavis returned to Tweedvale in the hills north east of Adelaide. Prior to the First World War, Tweedvale had been known as Lobethal, but anti-German sentiment led to its name change. Later it reverted to the name its original Lutheran settlers had given it. Mavis taught Grades 4 and 5 at the primary school. She lived with another teacher in a shared room and managed to return to Adelaide by bus about once a fortnight. On those weekends when she remained in Tweedvale, she would meet other teachers in the local library, go for walks and perhaps attend a local football match.

When Mavis came to Adelaide, she and I met as part of an extended group — to my considerable frustration. We played social tennis on Saturday afternoons, and frequently had musical gatherings in the evenings. Mavis contributed a great deal to making these gatherings at her home happy occasions for everyone present and, of course, this was especially so for me. On Sunday afternoons Brice and I were teachers at Flinders Street and, with typical Russell family generosity, I was always an invited guest at their Sunday evening meal, followed by church. We went and returned as a group. I was treated very much as one of the family but not until a very long time, as a special friend of Mavis.

Some authorities assert that men are likely to marry women who remind them of their mothers. Maybe so. My own mother sacrificed much to ensure I had a good education, that I could partake in school sports, and that I could enjoy and benefit from scouting. On reflection, I have wondered if on that fateful day when I met Mavis I had somehow discerned that she was that rare type who is less concerned about their own welfare than that of others. All through our long association, I never heard her complain, never heard her say anything adverse about someone else. She always put her family's, and then the community's, needs before her own. She lived with commonsense frugality but with generosity whenever others were involved.

The worst eight months of my life began in April 1933 — yet they should have been my happiest. I was an unemployed eighteen-year-old without any prospects or qualifications except an early Matriculation certificate. I was in love with a twenty-six-year-old teacher in a permanent appointment. In those days there were many unemployed people on the streets of Adelaide. I was just one amongst thousands. There were no monetary unemployment benefits, but ration cards were issued once a fortnight. These bought one some bread, sugar, flour, tea, and meat. The unemployed didn't starve, but there were many evictions of families who could not pay their rent. I spent a lot of time reading in the State Library and helping the caretaker of the church. He couldn't pay me, but sometimes he gave me lunch. As a matrimonial prospect, I didn't rate.

I think I only gained Mavis's acceptance because I was not at first seen by her or her family as a suitor. More by good luck than any kind of management, I had not pressed for that recognition. I rather think all three Russell girls were “man-shy”, yet I know they were greatly admired by male colleagues and acquaintances. Slowly it became apparent to the Russells that I hoped for deeper things than friendship with Mavis. And as our relationship progressed, under strict and by now less than approving family supervision, the atmosphere in Mavis's home lost its former congenial warmth. Mavis, however, did not waver in her desire for my companionship. During the January 1934 school holidays, her parents thought it prudent for her to go to Port Augusta to visit distant relatives. These included an eligible young man named Sam, a fisherman who was nearer Mavis's age.

Desperate to achieve at least a little more status in the Russels' eyes, I thought it might be possible to obtain casual work on some of the River Murray blocks picking apricots and later sultanas. So I left home on a cycle with eighteen pence and blankets and my ration card. I pedalled some hundreds of miles calling on blockies without success. I based myself in Barmera, sleeping in an unused shed at the back of the local scoutmaster's house. As I cycled around I met many other unemployed people all seeking casual work picking fruit. The fruitgrowers would put one's name on a list — you could be the twelfth name on the “reserve list” for a blockie who only had work for six hands. Mavis wrote to me but I couldn't reply because I couldn't afford the paper or the stamps. Her letters were warm and encouraging to a young man in despair about his future. I would visualise her being courted by Sam, under parental pressure to be polite. But she since told me that she never had doubts about choosing me as her life partner.