’Arry Stottle and Anita of the Two Teeth

Anita Stewart, plastic bags stuffed with provisions hanging from each arm of her oversized mans' gaberdine raincoat, shuffled slowly up the pot-holed hill to her Wooloomooloo home, totally lost in the task before her. 

Stopping to catch her breath half way up, she rested her packages on an upturned galvanised garbage bin in the gutter and, slipping a dainty foot out of one of her bedroom slippers, she turned around pointing her stubborn chin back down the way she had just come. A gust of wind pilfered the dust and dead leaves from the gutter, sending it eddying around her feet. A beer can rolled aimlessly down the gutter in pursuit. A loose screen door flapped open. And shut. And yesterday’s newspaper fluttered haphazardly, trapped between the lid and the upturned bin.

The old woman turned her collar to the wind and her attention to re arranging the pages of the newspaper. Satisfied she had missed nothing, she carefully folded the paper and slid it into one of the already bursting plastic bags.

A quick glance back down the hill and the shuffling continued.

I remembered back to the first time I had met Anita Stewart, twelve years before. 

It was one of those sultry, cloudless days, late in the afternoon in mid-summer. One of those days where security had been abandoned for fresh air and front doors remained open long after common sense says they shouldn’t. Long shadows had begun to line this street of open doors, the conversation changing from the invisible occupants within, as I passed each one. 

“You know where the ruddy fridge is, get your own ruddy beer!” from one.

And shouted above the ABC news, ‘There’s a southerly buster on its’ way”. 

With that promise of some relief, I arrived at the tiny Victorian terrace house I had just rented in Charles Street, and opened my gaily painted front door of many colours. Hot trapped air wafted out to greet me and I opened as many windows and doors that I could to let the house breathe. Upstairs was stifling. I opened the french doors and stepped out onto the narrow rickety balcony and folded the bathroom towels I had left to dry.

Directly opposite stood Anita Stewart's cottage. One of those quaint dwellings that might have been drawn by any five year old artist in kindergarten. A simple, single sandstone step, worn down to half its height by over a hundred years of metal studded work boots, gave rise to a central front door - once painted bright red but now faded with the crackly patina of neglect.

Four windows symmetrically placed.

Two up.

Two down.

All cracked.

Only one working.

Many years earlier the walls had been painted, perhaps by someone as a reminder of the Mediterranian village they left behind, in a very proper shade of gelato blue. But now the successive suns of passing summers had faded its flaking countenance to a powdery pastel.

To the right and left ran a paling fence all sagging and bent, mostly at an angle of 45 degrees, festooned with Wandering Jew running on from here to nowhere, protecting nothing from anything, and providing little more than an adequate target for the local dogs and a wonderful hiding place for the local children.

No 14 seemed a sad, neglected little house. 

Sad perhaps because most of the adjoining dwellings had been abandoned and it stood now alone and partly submerged in a tangled sea of the purple trumpets of Morning Glory and the striped leaves of Wandering Spiderwort. And because of the back gardens, abandoned by all except distortedemon trees. “If you can’t get free lemons, you don’t have any friends” the saying goes. Noone ever bought lemons in Charles Street. 

And sad, partly because of the old lady who lived there seemed every bit as neglected and forgotten as her house.

On my side of the street, to my left, lived Maria and Joe Bardetta. Maria could often be heard singing arias from popular Italian operas while she cooked. Nessun Dorma by Puccini - traditionally sung by a Tenor - was one of her favourites and it sounded all the sweeter for her contralto voice. At times like these we’d quietly open the kitchen window and maintain silence while the delicious scent of fried chicken or spaghetti sauce being prepared for dinner would waft over the paling fence.

And to my right, in what used to be the old Sargent's Pie bakery, was the Speedy Welding Co wherein worked the Speedy Welding workers in their King Gee vests and the less satisfying pong of the garlic aroma of acetylene gas and their sweating bodies. 

It was the customry in Charles Street, after dinner and the heat of a summer’s day, for the menfolk to escape the demands of the kitchen sink and the stuffiness of their cottages to cool off in the evening air.

The street would come alive.

Tables and chairs would magically appear on the footpaths along with the playing cards, backgammon, hand made rollies, and cheap goons of Chateau Cardbord or flagons of Fiorellis’ Red - at $4 a flagon you couldn’t go wrong! Particularly after a shot glass of Tawny Port had been added to make it more palatable. Neighbours would sit down to settle their differences over a game of Briscola – not always amicably, it should be added! Giovanni Falconi, who lived in a run-down workers cottage on Burke Street, and Joe Bardetta would often argue about the finer points of Akdo Moro’s political shenanigans in Italy or their last game of pétanque. While it never came to fisticuffs, it often came close.

At such times the upstairs windows would rattle up and children, dressed in very little, or more often than not, nothing at all, would watch their parents argue and prattle over this game or that. Eventually, it would end with a hug or two, little hurt pride, a lubricating glass of plonk and a song from Maria.

No 15 Charles Street had been built with stables at the back accessible from Charles Lane. This was occupied by Mark Lang a photographer friend from London, who had painted the entire front of the house with a giant Union Jack. To his left lived the Messena family, Sicillian prawn fishermen, who would dry out their trawl nets along the footpaths and make good the damage caused by the shark traps and the rocks and whatever else lies at the bottom of the Parramatta river. In 2006 commercial fishing was banned in there due to the elevated levels of toxins in the catches.

The nets would be draped over the fences in Charles Lane, while a cross-legged fisherman at each end would pay homage with needle and orange cord - it always struck as odd that repairs were made with bright orange cord while the nets were invariably brown - but I never thought to ask why.

To the right was a tiny brothel occupied by Sinthia and Mary, two sweet single mothers supporting their kids. When they weren’t occupied we’d occasionally share a International Roast coffee and a Tim Tam. Decent coffee came later in our lives.

Anita stopped outside her front door grumbling quietly to herself as she shuffled among the contents in the unseen depths of her trolley from one corner to the other. Her voice came up from the hot pavement below in an unmistakable Irish brogue: "Where der hell are me bleedin keys then? I asks m’self?, Should never have then there dere in the firs' place."

The search continued. 

Everything about Anita seemed to creak and groan. Her bones. Her trolley. Her coat - which was far too heavy, considering it was the middle of summer - and eventually, once she had located her keys, her front door. All the creaks and groans up to this point had been muffled and faded like the old lady, but the protest made by the front door was altogether different.

It was a signal.

Without warning, in the half-light, furry shadows were moving everywhere. Little bedraggled things I hadn't noticed while they were still. Drain pipes seemed to detach themselves from the walls. The ground under a parked car started to move. Rotting tree stumps in the vacant lot next door came to life. Twenty or more cats, summoned to dine by the plea of that old front door, as they had been since 1948 when Anita first bought the house for 200 pounds.  

Without resting, she greeted them as they came forward.

First to appear was a huge black and white pie-bald tomcat, who looked like he was dressed for dinner in a tuxedo. He had a weeping eye, one ear and more scars than Chips Rafferty, who was making figure-of-eight passes between her legs, "Ah! ‘Arry Stottle’'Ow's that eye, then? I’ll bathe it later if you let me… what yer been up to, then?"

Second was an enormous dark brown, furry lump who seemed to be wearing Orbison eyeshades: "'ere's Roy then! Been with the ladies again, I'll be bound!"

And on it went. Each abandoned animal had a name.

The air was hot and breathless and the old lady was puffing heavily, but she never once paused until, with a final groan, she dragged it handle first, up the step and into her house only to reappear a few moments later when she began to line the edge of the footpath with a row of chipped saucers in varying sizes and colours.

These she proceeded to fill with scraps of non-descript fishy things from a  dented kettle without a handle - talking to the cats as she did - asking this one to be patient and telling the next how she had spent her day.

Indeed, I learnt more about Anita over the subsequent years from her conversations with her cats than I did from her directly.

The street was narrow and the smell coming up from below was unmistakable – Anita seemed to be feeding her cats a concoction of boiled carpet and soiled fish. Fortunately, there was less fish than there were cats and pretty soon the aroma had been consumed.

At that point I either farted or the balcony creaked.

Looking up, the old lady smiled a toothless smile that cracked her face in half like a pile of crumbled chalk: "Warm enough fer yer then? Never mind, it'll be cooler next month." Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and disappeared behind her front door again. Along with most of her cats.

After that first brief introduction, I got to know Anita fairly well - although she didn't tell me her name for a couple of years. At a hundred decibels her Irish brogue and her piercing tongue was better than any burglar alarm and with it she would keep residents informed of impending doom, announce marriages and deaths, inclement weather, chastise misbehaving children and frighten off local drunks along with the pigeons. All from her bedroom window on the top floor of her little cottage. 

It was the only window that worked. 

On what we thought was Anita's 70th birthday we gave her a small party. It was perhaps her first in fifty years. An hour and a half before the party was due to start, there was knock at my front door and standing two steps down was Anita. “I’m a bit early, is that OK?”  For the occasion Anita was wearing a bright pint floral ensemble covered in yards of bright pink Tulle, bright green Adidas joggers and a sheepish grin. And then, as she spied the cake "Oh my! That for me?" One week before I ordered a simple sponge cake from the local patisserie - no nuts - I feared for her two remaining teeth.

The baker must have known Anita because the cake was smothered in shocking pink icing and bore the solitary word 'Anita', in what I refer to as a 'fresh eggs typeface’. Implanted in the icing was a haphazard arrangement of silver balls and a discreet forest of candles which produced a satisfying glow and an enormous quantity of smoke as it was lit in my front room like an Olympic torch. 

My front parlour opened directly onto the street and a blazing log fire prevented the chill of a lingering winter from sneaking through the three inch gap under the door. I left the door open and several other residents joined us to sing Happy Birthday and sample a slice of sponge cake.

During my first winter in No15, I had tried to block the gap with brightly coloured sausage-dogs made by my Auntie Jean and a few of the members of the CWA, who had a stall at the Paddington Markets run by the Uniting Church. But the gap between the bottom of the door and the dip in the step was large enough for them to be borrowed from outside, by pulling them under the door. By the time I had equipped most of the houses in Charles Street with draft excluders, summer had arrived and I gave up.

Anita settled herself into a Yorkshire chair by the fire and pointed her toes to the warmth.

She was reserved at first. Suspicious even. But as the fire and a glass or three of port did their work, she warmed to the occasion and, for the first time, began to talk about herself. 

Anita was born about seventeen miles from Belfast on the 29th September 1902 as Anita Barr. She never knew her mother who died six months after she was born. She was raised by elder sisters and her father who managed both his bank in Belfast and his family in County Down with an iron fist.

"Terribly strict, he was. I t'ink he was afraid we'd all go astray without mother dere to look after us. But of course, we never did. We lived in a lovely huge Victorian house with a maid and a beautiful garden with a tennis court. S'all ceased to be."

The family was comfortably off and although there was no need for Anita to work, she took up nursing at Belfast General Hospital where she met and began to be courted by Martin, the one and only love of her life. As was the custom in Ireland at that time, the courtship was all very proper and innocent.

"Tinks were very different then. In dose days we didn't run around with men like the girls can today. Even 'olding hands was frowned upon. These days the girls go out with any Tom, Dick and Larry - and sleep with them at night - and no matter. But to do that In Ireland in dose days, why you's ‘ave started another bloody war!"

Martin, it turned out was a Garda with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and in the two years they were courting, he had risen through the ranks to the position of full detective and, although “My father didn't approve…him being a Protestant, an' all, but we got married anyway, And I became Mrs Anita Stewart. We was married for one day.”

The day after the wedding, Martin was dead.

He died on the operating table, at the same hospital in which he and Anita had met, while having an IRA bullet removed from his chest.

"Oh I know all about the bleedin’ IRA! They caught the bloke that did it. He was just a slip of a boy of sixteen years  - poked a revolver through the open window of Martin's car and shot him once in the chest. He even knew Martin. The boy had a vicious father and Martin had helped him out from time to time. Later they found out Martin's name had been drawn out of a hat somewhere and this was the boy's initiation - he wouldn't have been considered one of their soldiers if he had refused.

"Martin was only 25. I remember my old granny telling me, just before she died, that they were killing each other when she was a young girl and when her granny was a young girl. I'm seventy-nine now and nothing's changed."

Funny. I thought she was seventy, at least it was her seventieth birthday we were celebrating!

"Nothin' changed. It's not the religion, yer know. That's jist an excuse. I was never bitter about Martin's death but I lost my voice for nine months. Delayed shock, they told me. The doctor said I should get away from Ireland and I had a brother in New Zealand. My brother sent me the fare. I nursed there for ten years before coming to Australia

"I was born in Ireland but I never really knew it. I want to go back. Oh I have lived well enough here in Australia, but nothing can make up for leaving your homeland and your kin. Relationships are the only really important t'ing in life because no matter how wealthy you are in your life time, all your possessions get left in the hearse when you go to the grave."

One day Anita asked me to fix a dripping tap. A simple job involving a ten cent washer, a soliloquy in blank prose over a couple of scraped knuckles and three hours of hard labour.

With the job done, I was invited to the inevitable cuppa of Nerada in her parlour. It was brought out in a coronation mug - George VI - and matching enamel tray. Anita's parlour filled the lower half of the cottage. Flower patterned lino covered the uneven floor and into it a dark brown path had been worn, leading from room to room. Over the window a pair of crumbling lace curtains hung limply, speckled with dust from the falling plaster hole in the ceiling.

An armchair, ancient and comfy but shredded by her feline family,was drawn up, to a fireplace stuffed with newspapers ready for burning. In one corner a Laminex table with a pair of chrome chairs was cluttered with popular magazines - all several years out of date. In another, a small cupboard, one corner resting on half a brick, sported a collection of framed family photographs.

"This one" explained Anita as she handed me a faded leather frame “is when I was nursing in New Zealand."

I saw no resemblance in the eager young face that stared back at me to the old woman seated before me, with one craggy finger delicately crooked around the handle of her tea cup. Anita's Irish stubbornness stood by her well during the early seventies, when the population of the 'Loo' began to diminish as people gave way to the pressure of local councils and greedy developers who were anticipating a major redevelopment of the area. Maria and Joe Bardetta had long gone. So too had Speedy welders and the Messina family along with their houses and possessions, to be scattered all over Sydney. A community destroyed by greed.

For nearly six years Anita fought a lonely battle refusing to leave her old home…unimpressed by the endless stream of nattily dressed business men banging at her door with bunches of flowers and boxes of chocolates and promises of a better life. Their methods and promises were extraordinary. 

At one time she was shown a model of the site around her home, a twenty story high rise built on all four sides and in the middle, sat Anita's little cottage. She asked them to leave and continued her stubborn battle. Number fourteen may have been a crumbling dump to the developers, but it was 'home' to Anita. And had been for over thirty years.

The pressure continued and eventually took it's toll on Anita. Her health, which had remained as stubborn and obstinate through her battle, finally failed and she suffered a stroke. Exhausted by her fight and weakened by her stroke she agreed to part with her home. The Housing Commission bought her cottage for $15,000 and, with the explanation that her home was beyond repair, promptly demolished it.

Anita was then moved to a new home half a kilometre away rented to her by the Housing Commission. "Oh… I know 14 Charles Street wasn't much to look at, but it was mine. The Commission gave me $15,000. But they'll get it all back eventually - I'm renting the new place from them. It's an irony! Before I sold I was able to get free medical attention and earn an extra $20 a week. Now, because of the money from the Housing Commission, my pension's been cut and they've told me I can't work anymore. So much for my fight!"

The older residents were the ones that led the fight to preserve the historic suburb back in the early seventies. Most had lived there all their lives, several for many generations on the same street, or even the same house.

They were accustomed to life quietly passing them by while things around them changed gradually. Few were able to cope with the high-speed world that was thrust upon them once they were evicted and their community was broken up.

I have mixed feelings about the redevelopment of Woolloomooloo. While the new development has mostly been handled with sensitively, but the character of area has totally changed.

Gone are the weatherbeaten walls. The crumbling paintwork. The alleyways strewn with shrimp nets and the purple trumpets of Morning Glory. The wild Fennel - which grew just about in any crack in the concrete, anywhere. The curious smell of ivy after summer rain as it poked through the holes in the corrugated iron roofs and the smell of ozone (petrichor) after rain on hot tarmac. Gone as well are the leaking roofs, the leaking walls, the leaking floors and the sandstone villas. All replaced now by neat rows of freshly painted ticky-tacky. They all seem a little too smug and perfect.

Gone too is Anita. The only memory of her is a painting, (based on my photograph of her in her bedroom window) on one of the concrete piers of the Eastern Suburbs railway. Woolloomooloo has been redeveloped and the overall effect, I guess, is acceptable, but I can’t help wondering what became of Maria, Joe, the Messsina Family and ‘Arry Stottle and his extended family.