SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Will anyone save the sentimental bloke?

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32819, 20 January 1972, Page 5

SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Will anyone save the sentimental bloke?

There’s a harvest for the picking in Sydney these days, a careless scattered crop sown by a random hand, now turned up by the bulldozer and the mechanical shovel, spilling out for the world to see.

Treasure trove? Perhaps you could call it that. Something troved and winnowed from the past. For while coming to the urgent fullness of a need to keep, to guard, to preserve something of history in a country that has always shrugged its shoulders and said it had none, councils and trusts and the like make orders and statutes to try to save some of the greater things for generations to come. Who will save the lesser? Who will preserve the sentimental bloke?

Yes, I know the publishers have and still do and C. J. Dennis’s poems have been set to music and acted on the stage and filmed and the films are period pieces to be preserved themselves. But that’s “The Sentimental Bloke.” And the sentimental bloke in all his literary manifestation isn’t on the shelves of any bookshop. And never will be. For he turned up on a rubbish heap whose crowning glory was a rusty sewing machine with most of the inside missing, along with two enamelled chamber pots, a crochet collar of pink wool

such as you might once haves put on a little girl’s dress, a[ card of napkin pins (one! missing), some old magazines, i a faded sepia photograph of a soldier. And some old cinema showcards —the kind they used to hang up in the comer shop in exchange for a couple of free passes—Joan Bennett, Frances Lederer, Lloyd Nolan in “The Man I Married” as well as Gene Raymond and Wendy Barrie in “Cross Country Romance” which promised “laughs from coast to coast.”

And a heap of assorted junk such as you might find perhaps in the laundry of an old house piling up year after year behind the garden tools and the half worn mat just too good to throw away and the disused mangle; a collection of eloquent trivia secure in its old laundry basket or the warped and peeling cupboard until the day they knocked the old house down. HOUSE GONE They did knock the house down. It went and now it’s hard to remember just what was there. Perhaps these comers and rows and alleys and lanes , still live in the eye of some old mind with time to sit and muse and recollect. Or in the memories of those displaced for whom the old house was a real place, a part of their living, a way and a time of life. The rest of us, sadly, too often hurriedly pass by, forgetful, too intent to explore and evaluate what is rising rapidly to replace it.

In the old gardens old and cherished plants survive for la time. This is one harvest to be gathered in Sydney if [you have the hardihood to uproot and carry away before they’re choked by the rank [growing weeds whose fertiliser is the bulldozer—or the bomb—and whose killer is the ultimate concrete slab. And it was on the track of one of these, a clump of something or other, that I found the sentimental bloke. It was the stamps on his letters that first made him interesting; big stamps from a time when George the Fifth was on the throne and you could send a letter for twopence. He wrote from the north to . . . well, as Dennis says "Names never count . . .

but ar > I like Doreen!” and it’s as good as anything. His

name? Well, Dennis again, “Billo is just as good as Romeo,” although that wasn’t his name either. But Billo was in love with his Doreen as surely as Dennis’s “Sentimental Bloke,” expressively and fluently in love, trying in words to cut through a tangle of doubts and fears and hopes . . . For the course of true love didn’t run smooth.

“My darling,” he wrote, “Just a few lines to let you know I am still alive and not too well. I think that I must be a little lovesick. You know, dear, I have not seen you for one month and that sis a long time when one i loves anybody. I wonder if you ever think of me in the iway 1 am always thinking of you?” He has doubts. “I suppose 'you have had a good laugh over these letters. Dear, I mean everything in them.” DIFFICULTIES And there are difficulties: “There is only one thing I am crook on and that is that I am the way I am placed. If I was not that way I would be the happiest man in the whole world and make you the happiest little girl but, dear, we won’t think of that, we will just forget that. “Just think of it, love, it will not be very long now before I will have you all for myself. I get frightened of it when I think of you coming up here for me in case you change your mind and find out that you do not love me as much as you think. But, love, you do love me don’t you? “I wish that I had you here with me but it will not be long now and the quicker it comes the better I will like myself ...” But just three days later he wrote “Just a few lines in answer to your welcome and loving letter which I received yesterday and was very glad to hear from you which I always am. I could sit down all day and read your letters. They are just lovely to me to read but it will be better when I have you here with me.” What did Doreen write? He answered: “You said that I could not have been serious when I told you things before. I have always been serious but you think otherwise but I have meant them and if it is the last thing I ever do I am going to show you how much you mean to me.”

DOUBTS Did Doreen have doubts too? From an earlier letter: “I cannot explain my feelings towards you. I have told you before that I love you and you have said that I only think that I do.”

And more difficulties: “I don’t want you to go away with your sister. Please wait until I send for you. We will pay them for looking after you so you wait there for me. We will pay your debts up now. I want you to think this over and let me know if you are going to wait for me and if you do you will never regret it because when you do come up I am going to keep you here for good. You will never understand how much I care for you. “You also said that I have loved others and found somebody else that I have loved better.. I have never loved anybody, I Only thought that I did. I have found that out since I have met and been out with you. Dear, I am the same way as you in thinking that a girl loves more than a boy. It may be in some cases but not in this one. If I only

thought that you loved j half as much I would be the' happiest man in the world.' You will come up when I send for you, won’t you?” ■ And as well he had some news, though not much of it. Once he had been to the pictures “They keep open on Sundays here.” And this time ’There was a fellow got his leg off just above the knee and lost a whole lot Of blood and was dying and they came down the town to see. if anyone would give a pint of blood to save his life.” BLOOD DONOR Billo volunteered and was accepted. “They took 22 ounces. I was sitting watching them cutting a great hole in my arm they put nine stitches in. it.” He didn't feel too well but didn’t want to stay in hospital. “I couldn’t stand the smell of the place. We do not know how the fellow is. It takes 24 hours to take effect so I will know in the morning. I have got my name in the paper for being brave.” He sent a cutting. “But I could not see a boy die when I have plenty of blood and if they want any more they can have it off me. I have got plenty and I am big enough so why not help others who cannot help themselves?

“I am pretty sick but what does it all matter? I would not care if I died now when you were telling me that you are going away with your sister and I may never see you again. You are the only thing that I have lived for for so long.” What was there in the past? “I am never going to go back to Sydney any more unless they take me back dead. That is the only way Sydney will see me again. I have been waiting for my chance to get out for a long while and now that I have got it I am going to take full advantage of it. “I have said goodbye to Sydney for good but not to you, dear. I have told you, we will be happiest pair in the north or anywhere we may be, that’s if you are going to come up. “You also said for me not to fall for anybody else and if I do to let you know. Well, I have fallen in love with the best little girl in this world and not likely to be run off either. I suppose you will want to know who she is. I am going to tell you without asking. It is a little girl by the name of . . . Doreen.” What were the difficulties? “You said that you wish it was me asking you to marry them. You don’t know how much I wish it either. Anyhow it may come a day when I will be able to ask you but you will have a say in that won’t you? “I wrote you two letters last week with only two pages. You will wonder what is wrong with me, but I thought you would think I was mad always telling you how much I really love you. But I cannot help it. I must try and convince you. I will always be telling you. “I think I have told you all for this time but not half of what I would like.” It was a long time ago when George the Fifth was on the throne and postage cost 2d. What was the end of the story? There was nothing to say. Did Doreen go away with her sister or did she go north? Did she and Billo ever see each other again? He said he was never coming back to Sydney but did he after ail? The letters were posted to a different address from the

one where they were found. Was it Doreen who tucked them away somewhere keeping them through the long years among the growing pile of nursery pins and pink crocheted collar, balls of knitting wool, old sewing machine, cinema programmes (they came later), magazines, old vases, photographs—part of a life that spilled out as just a heap of junk when they pulled the old house down. ■