MEMOIRS:
CHAPTER 8 FAIRIES UNDER THE BED
Goulburn didn’t have a cinema. But it did have a town hall with a projector and plastic fold-up chairs. On Saturday there were screenings of new movies like The Dirty Dozen, Lost Horizon, Clockwork Orange, The Three Musketeers and Doctor Zhivago.
One rainy Saturday, dad drove me in to town see a new movie. I strongly campaigned for Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, but he had other plans. All the way in, he tried to talk up this movie, something about a special guy who solved problems for the government and had good gadgets and ways of getting out of danger.
It all sounded thoroughly boring to me, but it was on that day that I was introduced to the shaken-not-stirred world of James Bond.
Diamonds Are Forever was the seventh of the Bond films, not counting those best unmentioned detours with George Lazenby and David Niven. It was to be Sean Connery’s final go at the role, a disappointment from which my father would never recover. He can’t even say “Roger Moore” without a tear coming to his eye.
I sat in Goulburn Town Hall, totally captivated by 007. Bear in mind that I was only seven and the only films I had seen to date were the likes of Wizard of Oz and Sound of Music. And here was a movie where the intrepid hero popped a grenade down a bloke’s trousers, tossed him overboard off an ocean liner and then dived on the bed with a gorgeous redhead while an explosion rippled somewhere in the ship’s wake.
All these years later, there is still something comforting about the sameness of the Bond experience. Each adventure begins with a spectacular stunt (and more often than not, a moment of semi-coital passion with a DD-cup blonde Professor of Physics), quickly segueing into the staccato trademark brass shot-notes of the beginning of the Bond riff (bad-up bah, bad-up bah, bad-up bad-up) which lead into him appearing in the middle of that little circle and then shooting it and blood coming down. Then there’s the opening credits framed by psychedelic silhouettes of lithe naked women performing semi-erotic gymnastic routines over massive weapons of death suggestively shooting out their bullets while some rock/pop star croons the title song. (Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger would have to be one of the most memorable, although Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die would give her a good run for her money. Others, like the Sheena Easton or a-ha efforts of the eighties are best not mentioned.)
Credits over, the camera swoops into the action in some exotic location and you enter the Bond world of deadpan one-liners, sexual innuendo, super-villains with elaborate plans intent on world domination, Rolex and Aston-Martin, incredible gadgets, precision cars, death-defying scrapes, expensive tuxedos and most importantly big chested and sexually generous women with names like Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole, Octopussy, Xenia Onatopp and Holly Goodhead.
Ninety minutes and as many explosions later, the world inevitably saved from earthquakes, lazers, germs, nuclear weapons and stock market crashes and the evil villain quickly dispatched in a grotesquely complicated and horrific manner with a wry smile and an appropriate witticism (“No need to get so chewed up over it…” / “Don’t lose your head…” / “He blew up over nothing…”, “Stick around…” etc), Bond could get back to the good stuff… namely having sex with a different DD cup blonde Professor of Physics to the one he started with, again complete with an appropriate witticism (“I believe he’s attempting re-entry, sir!”).
Then the end credits rolled. Over the years of multiple Bond movies and several Bonds, I always sat in the theatre through the fine print (often to the annoyance of the usher who wanted to clean the aisles), waiting to see the revelation of the title of next Bond epic. It used to be announced majestically in the words “James Bond will return in The Living Daylights”. It’s not the same any-more. All you get these days is the insipid and less promising “James Bond will return.”
When I walked out of Diamonds are Forever that rainy night, I had a bad case of what psychologists refer to as Vicarious Movie Personality Transference Disorder.
This is when you admire a character in a movie (perhaps because of their wit, physical strength, bravery, ability with women, humour, fighting skill, suaveness or capacity to laugh in the face of death) and when you walk out of the theatre, an inexplicable process has taken place whereby their character has taken over your body. You adopt their characteristics, in the mistaken and pathetic belief that people will look at you in a new and improved light.
Throughout the years, theatre-going boys (and men) of all generations have suffered from this disorder, proving that imitation is easier than creativity. My dad told me that on many occasions he left a cinema with the walk of John Wayne, the shoulder shift of Cagney, the wry humour of Bogart or the smooth talk of Clark Gable.
I have had many attacks of this syndrome over years of cinema-going. At various times I have been James Bond and every character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Murray and Bruce Willis. I have danced Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever steps and mimicked Steve Martin’s mannerisms from Roxanne. For two years I dressed like Michael J Fox in Back to the Future. There was also a dark period in my life after I saw Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, but the less said about that, the better.
It says a lot about the state of mind of the seven year old that I believed not only had I become James Bond but that everybody would see me as such. On the way home, dad ignored my pleas to get the Peugot up on two wheels. I got into bed that night, somewhat disappointed that I was the only one in it and my newfound suaveness had not brought immediate returns of the DD cup kind. But I did fall asleep fantasizing about growing up and flying space shuttles, planes, tanks and submarines and having a hang glider that inflated out of my wallet.
Unfortunately, it was my newfound devotion to the life of the secret agent that soon got me into trouble.
·
The world was a messed up place at that time. Idi Amin had elected himself General and was gearing up for all sorts of atrocities. The US Army were being hauled over the coals over the Mylai massacre while the Pakistan Army were enacting a pogrom upon the people of the newly declared State of Bangladesh. The Mansons were in the news over their horrific cult killings and the streets of Londonderry were running with blood. Melbourne and Sydney witnessed mass anti-apartheid demonstrations on the occasion of the Springboks rugby tour.
As usual, I was not aware of the horrible machinations of the world outside my country playground. The only thing I remember about the news at the time was Billy McMahon replacing John Gorton as Prime Minister, not because of political prowess but because Billy was an old guy and his wife was gorgeously long legged like a Swedish super-model. She had a propensity for low cut dresses with slits up the side that went all the way. Even at that age I found it stirring.
But about the rest of the world I remained blissfully unaware and, like most other fortunate children, thoroughly entrenched in my own realm of fantasy play.
If any of the patients at the hospital had looked out their window during the next weeks, they may have been surprised to see a youthful secret agent whizzing around the grounds, jumping over puddles, turning somersaults at random intervals and throwing sticks like grenades into the shrubberies.
My status as Secret Agent 008 improved considerably when sometime around then I got my first bike. Already being tall, I bypassed kiddy bikes and went straight to the King of the Road – a fire-engine red Speedwell 3-gear dragster.
It had a long seat - like a dolphin’s nose - made out of shiny plastic peppered with glitter specks that sparkled in the sun, and enormous handle-bars like a Harley-Davidson with fat hand-grips made out of matching red glitter-fleck. There were reflectors on the pedals and a long silver sissy bar at the back. The gearshift was enormous, like the landing gear on a jumbo jet.
To a child, a bike is not just a means of transport between A and B. It is a vehicle of fantasy, at any given moment transforming into a plane, a submarine or a high speed car. While David Scott and James Irwin were high overhead driving the Apollo 15 moon buggy around the Sea of Rains, I was having my own lunar adventures on my “moon bike” around the grounds gathering my own stash of moon rocks.
The Speedwell also allowed me to hurtle around at great speeds as 008 pursued by countless hordes of “baddies” who I quickly dispatched with rear-firing missiles. I became greatly skilled at skidding around corners and leaping off the bike while still in motion. Followed by a quick tumble and a sprint across the car park and up a tree, the effect was nothing less than devastatingly impressive.
It must have been over-excitement and a ridiculously over-inflated perception of the bike’s capabilities that lead me to attempt the jump over a large laundry basket of white sheets that fateful day.
I rocketed down the back path, skidded around the fire escape, lined up and came at the basket at full tilt. Unfortunately, I had not fully thought through the physics involved and had not even considered the necessity of any sort of ramp. I simply thought that with the force of willpower alone by lifting off the seat slightly the whole bike would become airborne.
It did not. Neither did I.
If any of the patients at the hospital had looked out their window during the next minute, they may have been surprised to see a mound of bed sheets careening crazily around the grass before disappearing down the gully where the compost was thrown.
“M” (short for “Mother”) was quick to confiscate the Aston (Speedwell) Martin and 008 was quickly retired.
Or so they thought.
I had taken to spending a lot of time inside the hospital. With its many corridors, multiple stairwells, crawl spaces, interconnecting rooms and complicated arrays of furniture, it was an ideal venue for secret missions.
The favoured mission was to see how far I could get around the hospital without being seen. Given the sedentary nature of the elderly population and their failing sight and hearing, they were hardly imposing adversaries, but they were all I had.
Starting at the back door, I could crouch and run through the kitchen below the line of sight of the cooks, then turn right into the TV room. This was usually filled with old folks in slippers under crocheted rugs snoring or watching Bellbird or Division 4, entranced by the cardboard sets and the sonorous majesty of Leonard Teale. I would commando crawl behind the couches and recliners to the long run of enormous curtains that ran the length of the room like the Grand Foyer of the Palace of the Hapsbergs, there to press myself into the wall and hidden from view, edge from curtain to curtain to the far side.
Once safe behind the curtains, my favourite trick was to pull my pants down and stand there grinning and snickering like a village idiot. There was something exhilarating about the feel and smell of the curtains on my skin. I am not sure if this was a quirk of childhood or testament to mental instability, but I hope it is the former. It was a long time afterwards that it dawned on me that the curtains were there to cover the windows and while I may have been concealed from the front, there was no such luxury from behind. I’ll never know if any passing staff members were startled at the sight of a tiny bare bum pressed up against the glass. But if there were, at least they had the decency not to say anything.
Emerging at the other end of the room - pants up again - it was into the hall and up the main staircase to the west facing sunroom. There were five beds there, each with a chequered rug and fluffed up pillows. Each bed had a cupboard on one side and a metal cabinet on the other where the patients kept their “personals”. There were photos of children and grandchildren and faded old photos of a husband or wife (often in military uniform) who had gone a long, long time ago. ThereAll of the possessions of their life had been edited down to a vase of plastic flowers, tissue boxes and hospital style water-jugs. Some patients had old jewelry, gold watches and false teeth.
Each patient also had a clear plastic air-tight container filled with a dazzling array of sugar frosted jubes. On one particular mission, I grabbed a handful and hid under a bed chewing them luxuriously.
William Blake well may have thought that the Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom, but I was destined for the Palace of Ruination thanks to a stop-off at the Roadhouse of Greed. I should have left it at that, but like so many things I encountered later in life - like Chinese food or a joke - didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.
I quickly worked the entire room, pilfering handfuls of jubes from every jar in sight. My pockets overflowing with the confectionary jewels, I took to dropping them down my shirt where they bulged around my waist till I looked like Orson Welles wearing a belt of walnuts. Base Camp was established under Mr Robb’s bed, who was asleep in it at the time. There, with the toothless Robb wheezing and mumbling above me, I lay the jubes out on the dusty carpet in elaborate patterns according to their shape and colour. There were squares, diamonds and rounds.
After a quick visit to the kitchen for paper bags, I was soon sneaking from room to room pilfering generously from the collective jube booty. Some of the patients must have been shocked to see a little hand emerge from under their bed and flop around their dresser like a blind snake till it found its quarry, quickly dragging the jube jar under the bed for several seconds before it magically re-emerged with a considerably lighter load.
By the time one paper bag had become two, I had lost all perspective of criminal subtlety and was literally pouring the jars into my bags. Within hours I had established several stashes under beds and behind curtains, scattered strategically around the hospital like the supply dumps of an Everest expedition.
The biggest bag, however, I dragged home to my bedroom. It was like a sack of potatoes. There, I engorged myself on jubes for two days. Sometimes it was like having lockjaw.
Unfortunately, I showed a great lack of creativity in my quest for a hiding place. I should have realised that my mother made my bed and was a frequent visitor to the underside of the mattress. Even if she wasn’t, the booty bag was so big my bed looked like there was a corpse in it. Mr Magoo couldn’t have missed it.
Mum summonsed me to the house with the icy call, “Peter Douglas Downey.” As there were no other “Peter Downeys” in the immediate vicinity, I correctly surmised that the use of my middle name was an early-warning that I was in trouble.
She was shelling peas at the kitchen table, and next to her to my absolute horror was my sack of treasure. The acidy feeling in the pit of my stomach was like being hit with a cricket bat. It was embarrassment, regret, dread and panic all rolled into one, complete with cold sweat and red face. It was the exact feeling I had when eight years later she found a library of Playboy magazines under my mattress. You think I would have learned. She was still making my bed.
“These were under your mattress,” she said. “Where did you get them?” Her eyes never left the beans.
I had been caught fair and square. I had stolen, extensively, and there was other course but to fess up. I considered bluffing but it was no use, so in an uncharacteristic moment of self-awareness, I chose to tell the truth.
It was somewhat surprising, therefore, that she did not accept my explanation about how the fairies who lived in our vegetable patch had delivered them to me as a gift.
My mother explained that some of the patients were very old and they sometimes did strange things like suck their jubes and then put them back in the jars. This immediately accounted for why Mrs Winthorpe’s jubes had all come out in a single slab like rocky-road. I immediately felt queasy. Mrs Winthorpe’s jubes had been some of the first down my throat.
The Lesson In Life was that all actions have consequences, and the most immediate was punishment; to confess and apologise to each and every patient in turn. In a twist of planned cruelty, this was to take place the next day so I could sleep on my crimes. That night still rates as one of the worst of my life.
I woke the next day in the optimistic belief that my parents would have forgotten. But they didn’t. Nor were they sidetracked by my stomach-ache or the several hours I spent hiding in the barn.
And so we went from room to room and I delivered speeches of contrition with my head hung low. My mouth was dry and my feet shuffled uncontrollably. Years later I found out the patients laughed about it and wanted to give me the rest of their jubes. Some didn’t hear a word I said. But to me it was the end of the world.
When we got back to the house, the sorrow overwhelmed me like a wave and I howled for what seemed like hours. The lesson had been branded on my psyche.
Petty crime would never again be my forte.
That is, until I was fourteen and I got caught stealing a Playboy from the local newsagent. But more of that later.
One rainy Saturday, dad drove me in to town see a new movie. I strongly campaigned for Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, but he had other plans. All the way in, he tried to talk up this movie, something about a special guy who solved problems for the government and had good gadgets and ways of getting out of danger.
It all sounded thoroughly boring to me, but it was on that day that I was introduced to the shaken-not-stirred world of James Bond.
Diamonds Are Forever was the seventh of the Bond films, not counting those best unmentioned detours with George Lazenby and David Niven. It was to be Sean Connery’s final go at the role, a disappointment from which my father would never recover. He can’t even say “Roger Moore” without a tear coming to his eye.
I sat in Goulburn Town Hall, totally captivated by 007. Bear in mind that I was only seven and the only films I had seen to date were the likes of Wizard of Oz and Sound of Music. And here was a movie where the intrepid hero popped a grenade down a bloke’s trousers, tossed him overboard off an ocean liner and then dived on the bed with a gorgeous redhead while an explosion rippled somewhere in the ship’s wake.
All these years later, there is still something comforting about the sameness of the Bond experience. Each adventure begins with a spectacular stunt (and more often than not, a moment of semi-coital passion with a DD-cup blonde Professor of Physics), quickly segueing into the staccato trademark brass shot-notes of the beginning of the Bond riff (bad-up bah, bad-up bah, bad-up bad-up) which lead into him appearing in the middle of that little circle and then shooting it and blood coming down. Then there’s the opening credits framed by psychedelic silhouettes of lithe naked women performing semi-erotic gymnastic routines over massive weapons of death suggestively shooting out their bullets while some rock/pop star croons the title song. (Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger would have to be one of the most memorable, although Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die would give her a good run for her money. Others, like the Sheena Easton or a-ha efforts of the eighties are best not mentioned.)
Credits over, the camera swoops into the action in some exotic location and you enter the Bond world of deadpan one-liners, sexual innuendo, super-villains with elaborate plans intent on world domination, Rolex and Aston-Martin, incredible gadgets, precision cars, death-defying scrapes, expensive tuxedos and most importantly big chested and sexually generous women with names like Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole, Octopussy, Xenia Onatopp and Holly Goodhead.
Ninety minutes and as many explosions later, the world inevitably saved from earthquakes, lazers, germs, nuclear weapons and stock market crashes and the evil villain quickly dispatched in a grotesquely complicated and horrific manner with a wry smile and an appropriate witticism (“No need to get so chewed up over it…” / “Don’t lose your head…” / “He blew up over nothing…”, “Stick around…” etc), Bond could get back to the good stuff… namely having sex with a different DD cup blonde Professor of Physics to the one he started with, again complete with an appropriate witticism (“I believe he’s attempting re-entry, sir!”).
Then the end credits rolled. Over the years of multiple Bond movies and several Bonds, I always sat in the theatre through the fine print (often to the annoyance of the usher who wanted to clean the aisles), waiting to see the revelation of the title of next Bond epic. It used to be announced majestically in the words “James Bond will return in The Living Daylights”. It’s not the same any-more. All you get these days is the insipid and less promising “James Bond will return.”
When I walked out of Diamonds are Forever that rainy night, I had a bad case of what psychologists refer to as Vicarious Movie Personality Transference Disorder.
This is when you admire a character in a movie (perhaps because of their wit, physical strength, bravery, ability with women, humour, fighting skill, suaveness or capacity to laugh in the face of death) and when you walk out of the theatre, an inexplicable process has taken place whereby their character has taken over your body. You adopt their characteristics, in the mistaken and pathetic belief that people will look at you in a new and improved light.
Throughout the years, theatre-going boys (and men) of all generations have suffered from this disorder, proving that imitation is easier than creativity. My dad told me that on many occasions he left a cinema with the walk of John Wayne, the shoulder shift of Cagney, the wry humour of Bogart or the smooth talk of Clark Gable.
I have had many attacks of this syndrome over years of cinema-going. At various times I have been James Bond and every character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Murray and Bruce Willis. I have danced Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever steps and mimicked Steve Martin’s mannerisms from Roxanne. For two years I dressed like Michael J Fox in Back to the Future. There was also a dark period in my life after I saw Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, but the less said about that, the better.
It says a lot about the state of mind of the seven year old that I believed not only had I become James Bond but that everybody would see me as such. On the way home, dad ignored my pleas to get the Peugot up on two wheels. I got into bed that night, somewhat disappointed that I was the only one in it and my newfound suaveness had not brought immediate returns of the DD cup kind. But I did fall asleep fantasizing about growing up and flying space shuttles, planes, tanks and submarines and having a hang glider that inflated out of my wallet.
Unfortunately, it was my newfound devotion to the life of the secret agent that soon got me into trouble.
·
The world was a messed up place at that time. Idi Amin had elected himself General and was gearing up for all sorts of atrocities. The US Army were being hauled over the coals over the Mylai massacre while the Pakistan Army were enacting a pogrom upon the people of the newly declared State of Bangladesh. The Mansons were in the news over their horrific cult killings and the streets of Londonderry were running with blood. Melbourne and Sydney witnessed mass anti-apartheid demonstrations on the occasion of the Springboks rugby tour.
As usual, I was not aware of the horrible machinations of the world outside my country playground. The only thing I remember about the news at the time was Billy McMahon replacing John Gorton as Prime Minister, not because of political prowess but because Billy was an old guy and his wife was gorgeously long legged like a Swedish super-model. She had a propensity for low cut dresses with slits up the side that went all the way. Even at that age I found it stirring.
But about the rest of the world I remained blissfully unaware and, like most other fortunate children, thoroughly entrenched in my own realm of fantasy play.
If any of the patients at the hospital had looked out their window during the next weeks, they may have been surprised to see a youthful secret agent whizzing around the grounds, jumping over puddles, turning somersaults at random intervals and throwing sticks like grenades into the shrubberies.
My status as Secret Agent 008 improved considerably when sometime around then I got my first bike. Already being tall, I bypassed kiddy bikes and went straight to the King of the Road – a fire-engine red Speedwell 3-gear dragster.
It had a long seat - like a dolphin’s nose - made out of shiny plastic peppered with glitter specks that sparkled in the sun, and enormous handle-bars like a Harley-Davidson with fat hand-grips made out of matching red glitter-fleck. There were reflectors on the pedals and a long silver sissy bar at the back. The gearshift was enormous, like the landing gear on a jumbo jet.
To a child, a bike is not just a means of transport between A and B. It is a vehicle of fantasy, at any given moment transforming into a plane, a submarine or a high speed car. While David Scott and James Irwin were high overhead driving the Apollo 15 moon buggy around the Sea of Rains, I was having my own lunar adventures on my “moon bike” around the grounds gathering my own stash of moon rocks.
The Speedwell also allowed me to hurtle around at great speeds as 008 pursued by countless hordes of “baddies” who I quickly dispatched with rear-firing missiles. I became greatly skilled at skidding around corners and leaping off the bike while still in motion. Followed by a quick tumble and a sprint across the car park and up a tree, the effect was nothing less than devastatingly impressive.
It must have been over-excitement and a ridiculously over-inflated perception of the bike’s capabilities that lead me to attempt the jump over a large laundry basket of white sheets that fateful day.
I rocketed down the back path, skidded around the fire escape, lined up and came at the basket at full tilt. Unfortunately, I had not fully thought through the physics involved and had not even considered the necessity of any sort of ramp. I simply thought that with the force of willpower alone by lifting off the seat slightly the whole bike would become airborne.
It did not. Neither did I.
If any of the patients at the hospital had looked out their window during the next minute, they may have been surprised to see a mound of bed sheets careening crazily around the grass before disappearing down the gully where the compost was thrown.
“M” (short for “Mother”) was quick to confiscate the Aston (Speedwell) Martin and 008 was quickly retired.
Or so they thought.
I had taken to spending a lot of time inside the hospital. With its many corridors, multiple stairwells, crawl spaces, interconnecting rooms and complicated arrays of furniture, it was an ideal venue for secret missions.
The favoured mission was to see how far I could get around the hospital without being seen. Given the sedentary nature of the elderly population and their failing sight and hearing, they were hardly imposing adversaries, but they were all I had.
Starting at the back door, I could crouch and run through the kitchen below the line of sight of the cooks, then turn right into the TV room. This was usually filled with old folks in slippers under crocheted rugs snoring or watching Bellbird or Division 4, entranced by the cardboard sets and the sonorous majesty of Leonard Teale. I would commando crawl behind the couches and recliners to the long run of enormous curtains that ran the length of the room like the Grand Foyer of the Palace of the Hapsbergs, there to press myself into the wall and hidden from view, edge from curtain to curtain to the far side.
Once safe behind the curtains, my favourite trick was to pull my pants down and stand there grinning and snickering like a village idiot. There was something exhilarating about the feel and smell of the curtains on my skin. I am not sure if this was a quirk of childhood or testament to mental instability, but I hope it is the former. It was a long time afterwards that it dawned on me that the curtains were there to cover the windows and while I may have been concealed from the front, there was no such luxury from behind. I’ll never know if any passing staff members were startled at the sight of a tiny bare bum pressed up against the glass. But if there were, at least they had the decency not to say anything.
Emerging at the other end of the room - pants up again - it was into the hall and up the main staircase to the west facing sunroom. There were five beds there, each with a chequered rug and fluffed up pillows. Each bed had a cupboard on one side and a metal cabinet on the other where the patients kept their “personals”. There were photos of children and grandchildren and faded old photos of a husband or wife (often in military uniform) who had gone a long, long time ago. ThereAll of the possessions of their life had been edited down to a vase of plastic flowers, tissue boxes and hospital style water-jugs. Some patients had old jewelry, gold watches and false teeth.
Each patient also had a clear plastic air-tight container filled with a dazzling array of sugar frosted jubes. On one particular mission, I grabbed a handful and hid under a bed chewing them luxuriously.
William Blake well may have thought that the Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom, but I was destined for the Palace of Ruination thanks to a stop-off at the Roadhouse of Greed. I should have left it at that, but like so many things I encountered later in life - like Chinese food or a joke - didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.
I quickly worked the entire room, pilfering handfuls of jubes from every jar in sight. My pockets overflowing with the confectionary jewels, I took to dropping them down my shirt where they bulged around my waist till I looked like Orson Welles wearing a belt of walnuts. Base Camp was established under Mr Robb’s bed, who was asleep in it at the time. There, with the toothless Robb wheezing and mumbling above me, I lay the jubes out on the dusty carpet in elaborate patterns according to their shape and colour. There were squares, diamonds and rounds.
After a quick visit to the kitchen for paper bags, I was soon sneaking from room to room pilfering generously from the collective jube booty. Some of the patients must have been shocked to see a little hand emerge from under their bed and flop around their dresser like a blind snake till it found its quarry, quickly dragging the jube jar under the bed for several seconds before it magically re-emerged with a considerably lighter load.
By the time one paper bag had become two, I had lost all perspective of criminal subtlety and was literally pouring the jars into my bags. Within hours I had established several stashes under beds and behind curtains, scattered strategically around the hospital like the supply dumps of an Everest expedition.
The biggest bag, however, I dragged home to my bedroom. It was like a sack of potatoes. There, I engorged myself on jubes for two days. Sometimes it was like having lockjaw.
Unfortunately, I showed a great lack of creativity in my quest for a hiding place. I should have realised that my mother made my bed and was a frequent visitor to the underside of the mattress. Even if she wasn’t, the booty bag was so big my bed looked like there was a corpse in it. Mr Magoo couldn’t have missed it.
Mum summonsed me to the house with the icy call, “Peter Douglas Downey.” As there were no other “Peter Downeys” in the immediate vicinity, I correctly surmised that the use of my middle name was an early-warning that I was in trouble.
She was shelling peas at the kitchen table, and next to her to my absolute horror was my sack of treasure. The acidy feeling in the pit of my stomach was like being hit with a cricket bat. It was embarrassment, regret, dread and panic all rolled into one, complete with cold sweat and red face. It was the exact feeling I had when eight years later she found a library of Playboy magazines under my mattress. You think I would have learned. She was still making my bed.
“These were under your mattress,” she said. “Where did you get them?” Her eyes never left the beans.
I had been caught fair and square. I had stolen, extensively, and there was other course but to fess up. I considered bluffing but it was no use, so in an uncharacteristic moment of self-awareness, I chose to tell the truth.
It was somewhat surprising, therefore, that she did not accept my explanation about how the fairies who lived in our vegetable patch had delivered them to me as a gift.
My mother explained that some of the patients were very old and they sometimes did strange things like suck their jubes and then put them back in the jars. This immediately accounted for why Mrs Winthorpe’s jubes had all come out in a single slab like rocky-road. I immediately felt queasy. Mrs Winthorpe’s jubes had been some of the first down my throat.
The Lesson In Life was that all actions have consequences, and the most immediate was punishment; to confess and apologise to each and every patient in turn. In a twist of planned cruelty, this was to take place the next day so I could sleep on my crimes. That night still rates as one of the worst of my life.
I woke the next day in the optimistic belief that my parents would have forgotten. But they didn’t. Nor were they sidetracked by my stomach-ache or the several hours I spent hiding in the barn.
And so we went from room to room and I delivered speeches of contrition with my head hung low. My mouth was dry and my feet shuffled uncontrollably. Years later I found out the patients laughed about it and wanted to give me the rest of their jubes. Some didn’t hear a word I said. But to me it was the end of the world.
When we got back to the house, the sorrow overwhelmed me like a wave and I howled for what seemed like hours. The lesson had been branded on my psyche.
Petty crime would never again be my forte.
That is, until I was fourteen and I got caught stealing a Playboy from the local newsagent. But more of that later.