The conversation between Robert and his father flowed easily. And that was because Andrew’s innocent deception had worked: they already knew each other. Best of all, they’d already reached the depth proper to a father and son relationship because Andrew’s misreading of the Littlemore case – the conspiracy that never was – had played a significant role in damaging Robert’s career with the Guardian. They’d kicked off their association with the sort of mixed baggage that ordinarily takes years to accumulate. It was nigh on perfect. They’d put their coats on and were sitting outside on the decking, hunched in garden chairs.
‘I don’t understand how he could have been one man to you and another man to me,’ said Robert, hands thrust into his pockets. They’d discussed almost everything else, slowly approaching the dividing line between them. ‘Was he two people at the same time? Or did he change? And if he changed, does it matter?’
Robert’s mind was teeming with questions – cold analytical questions – that seemed to have no bearing on the man he’d known and loved. The Lenny Sambourne who was ‘Dad’ had been a wonderful, irreplaceable presence in Robert’s life. The image of his ‘mother’ screaming in fear was simply unreal. This other man could not have been responsible for the nightmare; but he was.
‘For a long time, I just didn’t care,’ said Andrew, from behind an upturned collar. ‘If I wanted to know anything, it was why. Why had he been so out of control? Why couldn’t he relate normally? Why had he kept exploding? There had to be an explanation.’
Andrew discovered the reason by chance, after a friend in Zambia invited him to spend a couple of weeks bartending in Brisbane. He stayed on and hitchhiked north to Mackay, knowing his father had worked on a sugar cane plantation near Bakers Creek. He made enquiries, finally meeting a boozy fisherman who remembered Big Lenny Sambourne. And then came a totally unexpected revelation. Big Lenny was no native Aussie. He’d been born in Sheffield, coming to Australia aged eight with his twin sister. His parents? They’d died. The sister? Hadn’t seen her since they arrived in Melbourne. Never said how they got parted. And as for Big Lenny, well, he was a strange kind of raw prawn, because, having said all that, which wasn’t much, he went back to Britain in the sixties to find his parents after convincing himself they were still alive.
‘It’s taken me time to piece things together,’ said Andrew. ‘I spent years trying to trace his past. And now I know a little of what my father and your grandfather kept to himself.’
Leonard Andrew Sambourne and his twin Margaret Lucy were brought into the care of the state by court order. Two years later, they were included in the child migration scheme that sent 150,000 children from Britain to different parts of the empire, 7000 of them to Australia.
‘It was a way of saving money as much as anything else,’ said Andrew. ‘They deported vulnerable kids overseas and then looked the other way.’
If similar cases were a guide – and it seemed that they were – Lenny and his sister were told their parents were dead, and the parents were told that their children had been adopted. Without any documents linking them to their past or each other, they were separated on the quayside upon disembarking and taken to different institutions where – and again surmise had to take the place of established fact – Lenny was subjected to grave and prolonged abuse.
‘Many kids were sent to loving homes and decent schools, but a lot weren’t. They were seen as cheap labour. And other things. My dad – your grandfather – was one of them. He had no childhood memories. He never spoke of playing in the backyard or swimming in the sea. I only realised this recently, after I began to remember him without anger. But he only talked about animals. Never people. He spoke about koalas and dingoes and wallabies and cane toads but never people. He’d lost faith in people.’
Andrew had been helped by the Child Migrants Trust in Nottingham. But the absence of records – the erasure of identity – meant that without an oral account from a victim only a sketch of the possible was within reach. But this much was certain: Lenny had run away from a brutal regime and gone looking for his sister. He failed, it seemed. But he also came to believe that he’d been misled about the fate of his parents. Crofty had remembered Lenny as a young man ostensibly researching his ancestors, joking that they’d been sent to Van Diemen’s Land on a prison ship. He got nowhere, he’d said. Which must have been true, because there was no way of linking him to any surviving relatives in England. Government departments and the relevant charitable agencies only kept closed archives. Lenny will have had no realistic chance of retrieving any information. Years later, and helped by the Trust, Andrew finally traced a Barnardo’s file and the identity of Lenny and Margaret’s parents. Further research demonstrated that they died while he was in Australia. He came home too late.
‘I don’t know what happened to him in that children’s home,’ said Andrew, ‘but I can work backwards from how he behaved with me. I can see that he was damaged. That he’d tried to cope on his own and couldn’t. He was harmed and then he went on to harm the people closest to him. He’d tried to live a normal life with Mum, only it fell apart when I came along. Maybe the sight of me brought back his own childhood and everything that had happened. I don’t know.’ Andrew shifted deeper behind his collar. ‘It doesn’t have to be that way. Many people suffered the same type of abuse as my dad and they didn’t go on to hurt anyone else. But my dad did. That’s his story. He never let the anger out. He never told anyone what had been done to him.’
Unlike Andrew, who’d spent years running away from himself until he met that barely coherent fisherman. He was saved by an irony, because, in asking questions about his father, he was confronted with the antecedents to his own story.
‘I think it helps to know why someone behaved in the way that they did,’ said Andrew. ‘It’s made a difference to me. Did he change? Yes, he did. Does it matter? Yes, I believe it does. You knew someone completely different to me. Keep what you can out of your own experience. No one should take that away from you … or from him. It’s yours and it’s real.’
‘But what about you?’ Robert wasn’t sure he’d be able to cherish a memory in isolation from his father’s experience; it, too, was real.
Andrew was feeling the cold. He was hugging himself, blowing warm air through pursed lips. ‘It’s no different for me. No matter what’s happened, nine times out of ten, there’s something worth keeping. I’ve looked at my experience. I’ve taken what I can, and I value it.’ He paused to let a train go past. ‘I just wish you’d kept that ship. I’d have liked that ship.’ They listened to the fading rumble. ‘Because the ship you describe was the Arcadia. It left Tilbury in February 1953 and took him to Melbourne. It took him away from who he might have been, and me. It took him away from me. Do you fancy a bacon sandwich? There’s nothing like a bacon sandwich.’
On entering the kitchen Robert’s grandmother put her arms around her son and grandson, drawing them to her and together. They were all too tired to speak. She’d been crying and her stained cheeks provoked more tears, this time from her brood, but then the doorbell rang. Robert pulled away, wiping his eyes. Moments later he was taken aback. There, on the front step, was the monk, Father Anselm. He looked exhausted, too.
‘Is this a good time or a bad time?’ he asked, uneasily.
‘A good time,’ said Robert, with a laugh. ‘A very good time. Come on in. I’d like you to meet my dad.’