Teddies, dolls and dinkies were common property in this first love

Tom Dusevic and his first love bonded over toys, books, tea parties and Romper Room and shared a roof, but not a bed.

Patricia Bird, aka Miss Patricia, host of children's television show Romper Room.

Tom Dusevic

@tomdusevic

4 min read

12:00AMJanuary 04, 2023.

Updated 10:00AMJanuary 04, 2023

Ineska’s eyes were a metallic blue, gleaming like a brand-new party hat. For a time in my preschool years the blonde, attentive girl next door was mine. She was a little younger, small, but we were inseparable; technically, we lived under the same roof.

The house, on the corner of Adelaide and Cecilia Streets in north Belmore, was divided into two separate two-bedroom residences with their own entrances. The yards were common, but because we lived in the front we played there more often.

There was a laundry shared between families and an outside toilet if you were really busting.

The back flat was rented out, as was the house in nearby Chalmers Street, which my parents had bought earlier. This was capital accumulation, my parents’ up-yours to communism in the steady 1960s.

I didn’t know we owned the flat where Ineska lived with her parents Rudy and Eva and sister Mary, who was my brother Sime’s age. I thought what a great guy my dad was, fixing their bathroom and front screen door. They were like us but different.

Rudy called my dad Jozo rather than Joso, the only person who did that. They spoke Croatian with my parents but among themselves used words I’d never heard. They were Slovenian.

Ineska didn’t say much and I hogged the talk-space. In my head, we were kind of married, or the serious stage before that – there were teddies, dolls and dinkies in our union. I took charge, given I was about a head taller and good at making up games. But like a lot of couples, we didn’t sleep in the same bed.

Our flat was tight, even by the modest standards of the day. I slept in a cot in my parents’ bedroom, while Sime and Teta Danica, our aunt, had single beds in the other room. The only decent space to play in was in the front entrance, a sunroom that had been filled in and modified. It was inside but could be closed off from the main house. Ineska and I made toys, painted, looked at books and had tea parties.

Sime and Mary were at school, and Mama looked after both of us for a time while Eva, blonde and kind of glamorous in my reckoning, worked. Rudy had a wild look in his eyes, what I’d now call hypnotic, like Rasputin’s. I was both mesmerised by and frightened of him.

The best time of day was when we went to pick up Sime and Mary from school.

Ineska and I would hold hands. We’d see other preschool kids while we waited for the bell to ring. On the walk home we’d often stop for cakes. I’d always choose a meringue, coloured white, blue, pink or yellow. Although I’d heard the baker say to another customer they all tasted the same, I was convinced pink was best.

Meringues defied nature, yet their colour, texture and lightness formed an alluring harmony. Biting into one was like crunching compacted air.

I pestered Sime about what was happening at school, looked at his books and learnt new words. He’d patiently listen as I went through the TV shows I’d watched that morning and what I’d learned, especially on Owly’s School, hosted by a puppet that seemed pretty real to me.

Romper Room was my favourite show, overseen by Miss Patricia, firm but fun, who I was hoping would be my teacher when I started school. I tried to get Mama to join in the games but she was usually busy with housework. My mum was fantastic with the “posture baskets”, the segment when you had to balance a basket – a tin or plastic bowl at our place – on your head and walk around; she could do the housework and not drop the basket.

In the parlance of the show, Ineska and I were good “Do-Bees”, marching around the lounge-room, doing dress-ups, having milk and a snack at the same time as the six or seven kids who were on the show that day.

“Oh, come with us and gallop, and gallop, and gallop,” Miss Patricia would sing as we circled the lounge-room riding a broom or mop.

There was the Bend and Stretch song to get you loose all over. “Bend and stretch, reach for the stars, there goes Jupiter, here comes Mars.”

There was time to rest your head and listen to a story. This was how we learned English, by hearing it said. But my first thoughts were still in Croatian. “Zasto” came more naturally than “why”.

At the end of the program, Miss Patricia looked into a Magic Mirror: “Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?”

Yes, yes, we’d reply.

Then the picture changed in a trippy sequence and she’d be looking straight at us.

“I can see Jason and Kylie, Sharon and Kevin. Jane, Sally, Jennifer and Peter, too. I can see all my friends …”

Much as I craved it, Tomislav was never going to be called, but even Tommy and Thomas were rare. Ineska was, like me, an outsider floating out there in space with Jupiter and Mars. We were made for each other. Pre-literate, a heart settled, my mind turned over a new phrase I’d picked up: Ineska was my best friend in the whole wild world.

Tom Dusevic is national chief reporter at The Australian. This is an edited extract from his memoir Whole Wild World (NewSouth).

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