Open Writing

Helping out as a volunteer in a local school library, I came across a book about how children lived in the olden days. Might be interesting, I thought. Hmm. Old china dolls, hoops etc. etc. Then, suddenly: ‘I had a trike like that!’ And: ‘There’s my toy stove and my walking doll!’ Suddenly my childhood had become something from ‘the olden days’! So, I thought, why not write about it? I could tell stories set in a ‘distant’ childhood that had suddenly become, at least to today’s kids, quaint and interesting. So I’m putting together a story set in a Melbourne suburb in the Fifties, roughly based on my own childhood experiences. Here’s an excerpt.

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‘I want you to go up the street and buy one lamb’s fry at the butcher’s,’ Mum had said and she had given Rosie two shillings. It was going to be a special treat for Smokey, their cat. Rosie and her little sister, Wendy, had found Smokey in the backyard trying to sharpen her claws on one of their swing’s metal posts. They had pleaded with Dad to let them keep her but he had said: ‘No! We are not going to have any cats. They bring diseases,’ and he had shown Rosie the section of the encyclopaedia that was all about Hydatid cysts. But Smokey had stayed, no one had got sick and Rosie was going to the butcher’s on her own for the first time to buy Smokey some liver.

She walked up the street, tightly holding the two silver coins. She walked past Miss Roberts’ Chemist where they sold Cold Porridge. Rosie knew it wasn’t really cold porridge, but that’s what everyone called the special paste they used for school sores. She went slowly past Coles with its rows of flat counters full of just about anything. Mum said they only sold rubbish there, but Rosie had bought some really good stuff with her pocket money. They even sold tiny little plastic babies of all different colours. Rosie had one tucked inside a matchbox bed she had made at home. She walked past the ‘Kangaroo’ Bank, careful not to step on the tiled kangaroo at its entrance, then stopped to look in the window of the paper shop. ‘Peg’s fairy book’ was still in the window. Rosie smiled. She was hoping she would get that for her next birthday, her eighth, and always checked to see that no one else had bought it.

At last, she reached the butcher’s shop. She stood outside for a while, working up the courage to go in. In the window, a big pig’s head stared down at her from one of the long metal hooks hanging from the ceiling. Its eyes were empty, its mouth gaping slightly in a final protest. Rosie looked down at the coins Mum had given her then, trying not to look at the poor pig, walked into the shop.

The air was thick with the smell of fresh meat, the floor covered in sawdust. ‘That’s to soak up all the blood,’ her older sister Dottie had said. Rosie tiptoed across the concrete floor, carefully avoiding any damp-looking patches, and stood behind the row of women waiting at the counter. A big woman smiled down.

‘Hello, luv,’ she said. ‘Helping Mummy with the messages are you?’ She turned towards the man behind the counter who was wiping a big knife on the front of his apron. ‘Here. You can serve this little one first. I don’t mind waiting. There you go, luv,’ and she pushed Rosie gently to the front. Rosie looked up at the man peering down at her over the counter.

‘One lamb’s f-fry, please,’ she said carefully, staring at the bloody smears on the man’s blue and white apron.

‘What’s that, girlie?’ he asked. Rosie looked down at the sawdust and shuffled her feet. Suddenly, it seemed a stupid thing to be asking for. It sounded stupid. Why wasn’t it just called liver, or lamb’s liver or something? The butcher wouldn’t know what she was talking about. Why had Mum sent her here to ask for such a stupid thing?

‘One lamb’s fry, please,’ she said again, louder this time. ‘For my cat.’

The man reached into the window and lifted out a piece of smooth, dark meat. He slapped it down on the scales, then, with a few deft movements of his hands, wrapped it in newspaper.

‘And what a lucky cat you’ve got,’ he said, smiling down as he pushed it across the counter. ‘That’ll be one and fourpence.’ Rosie gave him her two coins, reached up for the parcel, mumbled thank you as the butcher gave her some change, and walked quickly out the door.

She looked at the coins nestling in the palm of her free hand: a shiny sixpence and two new pennies. She had done it! She had been to the butcher’s all on her own and was carrying home one lamb’s fry for Smokey.

© Rosemary Davison