Paul parked the Roller at the gate of the hobby farm. The house was obscured now by trees, and the sign on the gate was elegantly embossed rather than just roughly painted. The property name remained unchanged, and the house --- despite a small addition and some cosmetic improvements --- was still recognisable as the one he had constructed all those years ago.
He and Ern walked up the long drive to find the current owner in the front garden. When Paul explained he’d built the home more than thirty 30 before, she was pleased to indulge them with an open invitation to tour the property, and then to join her inside for coffee.
When Paul showed Ern the little creek on the back boundary, a platypus obligingly slid out from its hideaway to sun itself. Walking back, he showed Ern the spot where the pumpkin patch had been, and the place where he’d built the pigsty. Then he stood with Ern on the little front porch where he had greeted Ede Tuck nearly 30 years before.
“Paul Wilson!” Ede Tuck exclaimed, throwing her arms around me and hugging me hard, then laughing that deep, resonant, Welsh laugh that made generous layers of flesh roll and her eyes dance. I was instantly transported back to another era, hearing the Ohio Matron’s happy singing as she went about her chores and tasting the rich cream–filled cakes, still warm from the oven, that she greeted me with after school every day of my early teenage years. I heard her telling me to “make your lips like a chook’s bum” to blow into the cornet mouthpiece when I was first learning to play.
It was a wintery Saturday afternoon and Ede and her son, Peter --- my Ohio ‘brother’— stood, with Peter’s wife, shivering on my front porch. It was over a decade since I had seen Peter. I hadn’t heard from Ede Tuck since I joined the army.
Ede introduced me to Peter’s wife and I stepped back and beckoned them to enter. I led them through to the kitchen where Fran was clearing the table after lunch.
“Fran, this is Peter Tuck and his wife, Helen, and...” I hesitated a moment, feeling rather foolish, then stumbled over the words, “I don’t know what to call you. Matron doesn’t seem right anymore and –”
“ ‛Mum’ doesn’t work for you now, and ‘Mrs Tuck’ is way too formal for someone you used to call ‘Mum’,” she laughed. “Why not just call me Ede. That is my name after all.”
I considered her reply silently.
“It’s all right, Paul,” she laughed, hugging me again. “You are all grown up now. Those old rules don’t apply. And my, how you have grown up! A home, a family. How old are your children? You didn’t introduce me to them yet.”
She fussed over the children while I asked Peter where he was living now and what he was up to. He had changed corps, been promoted to corporal and was stationed in Perth. He had two children, about the same age as our older two. Fran had presented me with another daughter four years earlier, and Helen was pregnant with their third.
“Cup of tea?” said Ede, looking up. “Sit, Fran. I’ll get it. Just point me at the makin’s.” She took command of our kitchen with the same happy confidence that dealt with a thousand boyhood crises and challenges during my early teenage years. Within minutes we were all seated around the dining– room table with Frances and Helen smiling silently while two brothers and their mother laughed over precious memories of childhood, struggling to fill each other in on events since they last parted.
“I visited Garry Simpson yesterday,” Ede said. “Things are not going too well for him marriage–wise, I’m afraid. I’m so happy to see you with a lovely family and a nice home, Paul. You deserve to be happy.” She winked at Fran. “He was always one of my favourites, you know. I shouldn’t have had favourites and I tried not to let it show, but this auburn–haired, freckle–faced squirt, with his cheeky grin and devilish eyes, won my heart. He was a good kid, and he was good company. He used to stand in the pottery shed for hours talking to me while I worked.”
“I loved watching you,” I said, remembering. “An artist at work. Loved those stories too --- about you working in decryption during the war.”
“Paul has told me such a lot about you,” Fran said. Since reuniting with my family, I had begun to open up about the happier chapters of my past.
Ede laughed. “Should I be worried?”
“He paints you as a very special lady.”
“Perhaps I should be embarrassed, then?”
“I only told her what you did for me. I’ve often wondered where I might have ended up if you hadn’t come into my life. I think I was pretty messed up when I arrived at Ohio.”
“It took us three weeks to get a word out of him,” Ede said softly, addressing Fran. Her eyes misted and her forehead creased. “He had us very worried. We were required to report that he was seriously disturbed, but they would have sent psychiatrists to take him and lock him away.”
“I used to call him ‘Monkey’,” Peter laughed. “He was a runt when he came there. Bald patch on the side of his head. Emaciated, and wanted to sleep on the floor for some reason. Scared of pissing the bed, maybe, or not being able to make it to required standards in the time allotted. Wouldn’t speak either. Shit scared of something. Dad made me take him to my room and show him my stamp collection and comics. Reassure him. Get him to speak. I didn’t want to, but we became mates and we were inseparable. He’s my little bro’, and I’d fight to the death to protect him if the need arose. Even now.”
“As if I’d need a wuss like you to protect me,” I said, punching his arm lightly and reaching in the fridge for two stubbies. “Look at you. All flab and beer gut.”
“That’s gratitude!” Peter replied, twisting the cap. “Cheers, mate,” he said, clinking the bottle against mine. Then he turned to Fran again and his tone changed. “Mum and Dad loved those boys,” he said, his voice warming with fond recollections. “Referred to them as ‛their boys’, and demanded they be treated with respect and kindness. Dad was tough. He ran a tight ship, but he cared and it showed.”
Peter and Helen excused themselves mid–afternoon to do some sightseeing. Fran started preparing dinner. She had invited Ede, Peter and Helen to stay and they accepted eagerly. I took Ede on a guided tour of the house and our little hobby farm.
“You’ve done an incredible job here, Paul. You always were good with your hands,” she said, running her fingers over the cedar–panelled feature wall in the living room. I was tempted to reply it was a shame her husband didn’t appreciate my talent enough to let me cultivate it, but I kept the thought to myself.
“So, tell me what else you’ve been up to since you left the army.” “Not much to tell. I work in a shit job I hate, but it pays the bills.”
Her face puckered with concern. I was still working on the electricity lines and I hated it. I had consented to complete a short course to become a qualified electrical linesman, mainly for the extra pay and the chance of a place on the on–call roster, which meant a generous annual bonus and occasionally some well–paid overtime. It was dangerous work. I tried to keep it from Fran just how dangerous, but in town one day she was embraced by a teary friend who had just heard a newsflash on the car radio. One of my workmates was electrocuted. His first name was Paul. She had misheard the surname. I didn’t tell Fran I had handled that light choke just minutes before it killed him. I didn’t tell Ede how dangerous the job was either.
“I took some time off a couple of years back,” I said, trying hard to sound more cheerful. “I had renovated a little cottage in town and we sold it and bought this land --- eight acres. It’s an idyllic spot. The back of the house overlooks the creek that forms the back boundary. The creek is inhabited with eels and platypus. I’ll show you shortly.
“It’s blissfully peaceful out here,” I continued, smiling now, although it was still a little forced. “A mile off the main road with only a handful of neighbours, all a considerable distance away. I hired a mate, on daily rates, to help me build this place to lock–up stage and I moved the family out here. Then, after I started working again, I worked nights and weekends to finish the place. It was a labour of love and I think it was the only thing that kept me sane.”
I didn’t add that, during the day, I went through the motions of living mechanically, without feeling. At night, I either hammered, sawed and sanded until I collapsed from exhaustion, or drank myself into oblivion.
“You never went on with your music?”
“For a while. Until some up–jumped academic decided the town bandmaster should be someone with formal qualifications. They brought a fellow up from Tassie who supposedly had a uni degree in music. I stayed on and played under him for a few months, but I quit after he told Fran I could develop into a competent musician under his tutelage.”
The acid in my voice discouraged reply, but the sympathy in her eyes told me she felt my pain. I decided some happier conversation was in order and changed the subject. I pushed the living room sliding door open and ushered her out. We walked towards the little creek on the back boundary. I hoped the platypus would be out, but I couldn’t see any. A few eels darted about just under the water’s surface.
“Remember the time I tried to run away?”
She nodded and laughed.
“I found my parents a few years back, and three brothers and three more sisters, plus the two brothers I knew existed.”
“Oh Paul! That’s amazing.” She smiled broadly, but her expression changed to concern as she asked, “And how did the reunion go?” Long experience with State wards would have taught her that going home is often a devastating experience.
“Good. Really good. Fran gets on well with Mum and Dad. My brothers are great.”
She was studying me intently, searching out my secrets.
“My brothers and sisters had good parents. They grew up OK. Adore Mum and Dad. Doesn’t seem like there was any good reason to take me away.” I tried not to sound bitter. When she didn’t reply, I forced a smile and continued, “But all grey clouds have a silver lining. If they hadn’t taken me, I wouldn’t ’ve met you”.
“I remember the day you arrived at Ohio,” she said in a wish–I–didn’t voice, her eyes watering. “You were so pathetically skinny. All battered and bruised. I don’t know when I’ve seen a little body in such dreadful condition, and in my line of work I saw a lot of abused children.”
“It wasn’t that that hurt me, though, Ede. I was a survivor. Resilient. I could have avoided a lot of beatings, but I stood up for myself, even when it cost me.”
She nodded and I knew she remembered times at Ohio when I defended myself despite the price.
“It was the loss of identity. The loss of a place to belong in the world. I see my brothers so at ease with themselves --- comfortable in their own skins. They know who they are and where they fit in the world. Me? I don’t know where I belong in the scheme of things. My father was a drover, a shearer and a horse breaker. Good with his hands and in touch with nature. That was me when I was little, a bush kid, feral. When they took me away, they took away the right to be me.”
I resisted the urge to add that I didn’t belong in a uniform, jumping to attention every time someone barked a command.
“And it turns out there was no good reason for it. I had loving parents. Dirt poor, but decent, caring people who worked hard and gave their kids all the stuff that really matters.”
She took a hanky from the pocket of her cardigan and wiped her eyes.
“One day I’ll find the bastard who did that to me,” I said. I was conscious of clenching my fists and thrusting my lower jaw forward. “Geoffrey Simms. I am going to find him one day and kill him.”
I waited for a shocked exclamation or a sharp rebuke, but instead Ede reached across and closed a hand gently over mine.
“And why would you want to destroy your lovely family and your good life by doing something like that?” she asked mildly.
“Because he deserves to pay for what he did. He wrecked families.”
“Not knowingly or intentionally, Paul.” She gazed into my eyes and I was a young boy again, eating chocolate cake and listening to her gently explain why I couldn’t go home to see my dad.
“Paul,” she said thoughtfully, “Geoffrey Simms was a pathetic, ignorant little man doing a job the way he was instructed to do it. A bureaucrat following instructions, that’s all. He didn’t mean to harm anyone.”
“How can you make excuses for him?” My tone was harsh, but it elicited no reaction.
“I don’t excuse what he did. It was terribly wrong. It was cruel and it caused children pain that no child should suffer. It tore out mothers’ hearts. It is hard to conceive a more dreadful crime, but it wasn’t his crime, Paul. It was faceless men in back rooms making decisions they were not qualified to make and giving instructions they weren’t qualified to give. Men who write policies to cater to the interests of self–serving power groups. Simms was nothing more than a vehicle --- a man doing his job, the only way he knew how.”
She let me think for a while before continuing.
“Paul,” she said softly, “you have suffered terribly --- suffering that would destroy many strong men --- but you have come through it. You have made a life for yourself. You have a family who love you, a nice home, a job. You have won the respect of good people, and now you have two choices. You can try to forgive those who caused you so much hurt, or you can invite pain and suffering back into your life and the lives of your wife and children. You can let the desire for revenge destroy you.” She stared meaningfully into my blazing eyes, willing me to unset my jaw and relax my gripped fists.
“Geoffrey Simms was a misguided little man following instructions,” she continued, lecturing me now. “Those who instructed him were blind and ignorant, and far too powerful for their own good and that of the society that empowered them. And you… you are a good, intelligent, strong man who has survived against the odds. You’ve shown the world those nuns who branded you were wrong, and Geoffrey Simms and the judge in that Children’s Court were wrong. The faceless men were wrong. There are better ways to manage situations like the one Geoffrey Simms sought to manage, but that poor, ignorant man could not conceive a better solution.”
For a moment, I felt my shoulders slump a little, and my fists opened. Perhaps I had been carrying this dead weight for too long.
“Guess I’ll stop looking for Simms. The bastard’s probably dead by now anyway.”
A little breath of air escaped her lips and a relieved smile lit her eyes, deepening her dimples. I let her enjoy her little win. She was a good woman and I didn’t want her carrying my burdens, but a dark, murderous anger still boiled my blood. If the bastard was dead, I would blow up the Department he worked for, and murder all his heartless, self–righteous colleagues.
I needed revenge, and someday I would have it.
~~~~
“Where are you going to mail it from,” Fran asked, folding a letter carefully and pushing it into an envelope with gloved hands. She fixed a typed label to the front. No return address. It was unsigned.
“Maybe Ebor,” I replied. “It’s real pretty down there this time of year. We could pack lunch, make a picnic and return the typewriter on the way.”
“Does subversive activity put you in the mood for a picnic?” She seemed alarmed by the thought.
“Subversive? Is that what you call it? I’m trying to save lives here.”
“By writing anonymous letters on a borrowed typewriter and handling everything with gloved hands so no–one detects where it came from? Why all the secrecy? It’s not as if you are doing anything wrong. This is what Workplace Health and Safety Boards were created for. They can’t function if people don’t speak out when an employer breaks the rules.”
“I told you. The union rep said he’d make sure I was fired if I rocked the boat on this.”
“Good for him. What a hero! His life isn’t in danger.”
She pressed the envelope closed and laid it carefully on the table, then removed her gloves.
“I don’t think I ever told you about the conversation at the Christmas party last year,” she said. “A group of us were discussing that death in Inverell and saying how worrying it was to have our husbands working in such dangerous conditions. Bruin was eavesdropping. Comes over and declares he doesn’t know what we are complaining about. The council pays a fortune to keep you all well insured.”
“Bastard. But about what I’d expect from that mongrel. He’ll get his.”
My mates and I were climbing 40–foot poles in freezing weather and blazing heat. Some of the poles were old and quite unstable. A large number of them were marked for replacement, but a bright young engineer, eager for advancement and keen to demonstrate his skills at reducing expenditure, designed a prop to hold them and claimed it made them quite secure. What was more disturbing, though, was that he adapted another piece of equipment, called a ‘red devil’, to back–stay the poles while we were climbing them. Red devils were hollow metal tubes pegged to the surface of the ground. He had them used as a substitute for heavy, well–anchored buried logs.
The red devils were intended as a temporary stay only. I verified with the manufacturer that no–one should ever climb a pole with a red devil used as a back–stay, but my employer insisted it was safe and necessary. I battled with the union rep to recognise the danger and take action. He didn’t climb.
“I’m on a good wicket here,” he said when I asked for assistance. “I’d really prefer not to rock the boat, and I’ll see you fired if you make any more waves about this.”
“Your fucking union forced us to strike over changes to the medical benefits scheme,” I replied in a voice thin with fury, “and we struck for a pay rise so insignificant that it would take three years to recover the pay we lost by striking.
“Your union boss mates failed to oppose a judge’s declaration that our job wasn’t dangerous. No danger money should be payable, despite several serious accidents and a couple of deaths in recent years across a relatively small number of linesmen employed in the State. But you guys agreed with the employer that because workers’ compensation premiums were high for ‘such a dangerous job’, the employer could deduct the premiums from our superannuation contributions. I was promised my contributions would be matched dollar for dollar, but what have I got in my super account? Sweet fuck all. Don’t you rock the fucking boat, mate. You just stand by and watch your mates die.”
The union rep held firm, and the dangerous work practices continued.
Apart from the danger, I found the work boring and my workmates incapable of stimulating conversation. When, occasionally, one of them came up with a bright idea to improve efficiency, it was dismissed with contempt, then adopted and credited to a boss who claimed it as his own. One worker did manage to force acknowledgement of his innovation. He was paid the grand sum of $50 for designing a device that ultimately saved millions. The result, of course, was that morale on the job was poor and most of the workers suffered through the day thinking only of the beer, sex and home comforts their pay packet afforded them at the end of it. The only upsides to the job were that we often worked in the bush, and on wet days we sat in the shed playing cards for hours while the rain pounded on the roof. We secretly prayed it would last for days.
I posted the letter, reporting the illegal use of red devils to Workplace Health and Safety, at a post box in Ebor. Afterward, I took the family for a drive out to the gorge and we ate a packed lunch by the roaring waterfall, then sat listening to the birdsong and replying to their calls. I enjoyed mimicking them and watching their reaction. I was good at it too. Fran was sure they thought they’d found themselves a mate.
“Listen,” I joked. “That’s a Dr Arthur bird. Hear him? He’s singing out ‘Dr Arthur, Dr Arthur’,” and when the crow called I told her it was singing out “Get faaaarked,” and I called to him not to be so vulgar.
“Storm birds are singing,” I remarked. “Some substantial stormy weather looming. Most people think their singing means rain coming, but actually their singing indicates a period of heavy storms. Did you know that? Look, the tree bark is tinged with red. The drought is about to break.”
“How do you know this stuff?” Nicki asked.
“My dad was a bushman. I remember him telling me these things when I was barely old enough to walk and talk.”
Fran smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes. “You missed out on a lot, being separated from him for so long, didn’t you?”
I shrugged. “I guess there were some compensations, but I missed him terribly. I never forgot the things he taught me, or the way I felt when he took me out with him and explained the secrets of nature.”
As expected, the letter sparked an investigation, and quite a furore at work. The bosses had us all lined up one morning while they ranted on about the trouble the letter caused and how misguided it was --- because they would never allow unsafe practices. They assured us they would find out who did it and whoever it was would pay. I struggled to fake dismay and disapproval.
Three weeks later, the rains hadn’t yet come. The late spring days dawned crisp and fresh and ended with a refreshing chill that invited Fran and I to light a fire behind the garage to grill chops or sausages. We huddled around the fire with the children watching the last of the sunset and the rising of the moon. The days were warm.
At work, we were replacing poles on a line in the bush some 40 miles from town, out near a gorge. I was enjoying the bird serenades, sucking in the clean scent of new growth, and taking morning tea and lunch around a campfire, toasting my sandwiches and boiling billy tea. Nearly two miles of wires terminated on a pole located near the edge of a cliff that dropped into a deep ravine. The pole was anchored with wires to a red devil pegged on to the ground as a back–stay. I was up there working one day when I felt it leaning. That wasn’t uncommon, but this was different. Disquiet graduated to alarm and a dull thudding in my head crescendoed to incessant hammering. My limbs tensed and I was suddenly ice cold.
There was no time to think about demounting. The red devil had let go and the pole was gliding smoothly, almost gracefully, towards the edge of the cliff. I was strapped firmly to the high side of it.
Time stopped. The ground rose and the world tilted. The pole pressed through the air. I felt like I was on one of those thrill rides at a fair, only there was no safety stop.
The air whistled as the pole pushed through. Somewhere in the distance I heard a bloodcurdling howl. The ground was rising, rising. Suddenly, there was a slowing, and then the movement stopped. The heel of the pole had caught in the ground and was fighting against it, pushing at the soil, demanding freedom. I was a few feet above the ground now. Strangely, I felt no fear --- just a cold certainty that my life was about to end. I had a vision of my mangled self, splintered and minced, torn face death–grey.
Then the ground moved and the heel of the pole broke free. With a thunderous crack, the pole crashed hard against the earth. My heart leapt into my throat and its wild pulsing choked me. My lungs screamed for air. I crouched on the pole a while, incredulous.
Am I alive?
A confused stew of voices; hands reaching out to touch my head. I unbuckled my belt. The world spun. Voices rattled commiserations, cursed and blasphemed. Contorted faces peered down at me, at the pole. Someone wandered over to inspect the red devil, tugging at the dislodged wires.
I climbed slowly off the pole slowly, shaking violently. I stood for a moment, testing my legs. I waved my arms, leant forward, swung back, turned from side to side and felt my face. A trembling hand pressed at my temples, pleading with my head to stop throbbing. At last, convinced I was still whole and in the world of the living --- not wherever we go when we cross over --- I jumped into the boss’s truck, drove back to the depot, and scratched my resignation on the bottom of my time sheet.
When I arrived home that afternoon, Fran had elderly aunts visiting. When I told her I had quit my job, their look of horror might have challenged that of a spinster discovering Napolean’s severed penis.
“And what will you do now?” one asked in a disapproving tone. “Jobs aren’t easy to get. I should think you would be grateful to have one.”
“Sell up, move to the coast and go on the dole,” I replied without thinking. I was more concerned with demonstrating my contempt for her and her lofty expectations than for indicating any genuine intentions, but after I said it I decided it actually sounded like a pretty good idea. I’d put in 20 years paying taxes for the privilege of slogging my guts out in jobs I detested, while beach bums bludged on the system and went surfing every day. And all up I had very little more income to live on than they did, despite putting my life in danger every working day.
Enjoying their shocked reaction, I added, “Become a bludger and a beach bum. I reckon that’s something I’d be good at.”
Fran was devastated at having to leave her home, but we sold it for more than twice what it cost us. Two months later we moved to Ballina. It was a place I remembered fondly as the scene of a wonderful childhood holiday, and close and similar to Pottsville --- a little paradise where I had spent some of the happiest days of my teenage years.
I didn’t think much about employment opportunities before making a choice for relocation. The cold climate had been messing with my health, so my doctor suggested we look for a place where the temperatures were less extreme. The other determining factor was a somewhat misguided notion that returning to a place where I’d once been blissfully happy could fix all my woes.
~~~~
Fran snapped the lid on the esky and lay back on the picnic rug to soak up the glorious early autumn midday sun. Lulled by the music of children’s laughter, I suspected she might have drifted into a blissful daytime sleep if not for the sounds from the transistor I held to my ear. I was listening intently to race calls and I knew she considered the sound an irritating drone.
“This promised to be such a great day out, Paul,” she said, clearly annoyed. “The kids have been looking forward to it all week. Why do you have to spoil it by spending most of the day with that infernal thing pressed to you ear, scratching on a bloody form guide?”
I ignored her question, but lowered the volume slightly. She shrugged and laid back, appearing to doze.
“Yes!” I shouted, jolting her from a state of half–sleep. “Twenty–to one, you little beauty. My bank just reached 40 grand.”
“Your mythical bank” she corrected.
“I’ve been working this on paper for a long time now and it never fails. One day soon I’m going to do it for real. Watch it make me very rich, but if you keep complaining and putting me down, you won’t be sharing it.”
“I just wish you could put it aside on days like this, Paul. It’s a family day out. We don’t have many and the kids need your attention.”
“The kids are fine. Listen to them. They’re having a ball. Young teens don’t want their father joining their games.”
She sat up and hugged her legs, resting her chin on her knees. “Thankfully, they are having a great time, otherwise I might be tempted to pack up and go home.”
I don’t know how long she sat there like that, but at least two more races were called and I lost on both. It didn’t faze me at all, but I switched the radio off after the second loss and declared there were no more system horses running in this meet.
“Peace, at last,” Fran said, lying down again.
“I want to take out a second mortgage, Fran,” I said suddenly. “I know it’s possible. The house is worth a fair bit now it’s renovated and we owe very little on it.”
She drew a deep breath and I prepared for yet another violent argument. “It should be my decision. I did the work,” I said defensively, recalling exhausting months of sawing and hammering late into the evenings.
“Yes, and you did a superb job too.”
I had renovated the first little old cottage we bought, installing a smart, modern kitchen and replacing the rusted tub and cracked basin in the ugly, damp cell of a bathroom, then tiling walls to make it sleek and modern. I taught myself carpentry, painting, concreting, tiling, and even the basics of plumbing. I transformed a run–down old cottage to a lovely modern home.
Then we’d sold it and I built a country homestead. My skill and dedication had astonished her, given my inexperience and the absence of any form of tuition or help. It broke her heart when I quit my job and we had to sell, but we’d made a healthy profit on it.
When we arrived in Ballina, I wanted a big, old, loved house wrapped in worn timber and iron verandas and ivy creepers, built in the days when proud craftsmen carved their souls into elaborate picture rails and mantels. In the end, though, we bought a late–model brick and tile that had been dreadfully abused and neglected and I was forced to renovate again. I complained bitterly, but I enjoyed the work. It was a distraction, and the finished product gave me a feeling of achievement.
The house nestled into the base of a hillside on half an acre on the outskirts of the town, surrounded by fruit trees and adjoining a koala habitat. The kids spent their weekends on one of Australia’s most beautiful beaches, still virtually undiscovered despite strong white–foamed breakers crashing on to clean golden sand. I bought them a kayak and they canoed up and down the river pretending to be pirates or explorers, reminding me of brief periods of happiness in a miserable childhood.
“So,” I said emphatically, “I’ve been figuring out this business plan, and I want to take a loan out to --- ”
“No, Paul!” she snapped. “I don’t care how much you’ve won on paper or how reliable you think this system of yours is. It’s not happening. We’ve been through this. We are not risking our home to bet on bloody horses. End of discussion.”
There was an uncomfortably long silence. My fists were clenched and my face was set hard. I was avoiding her gaze and trying to swallow my anger. Finally, I spoke again.
“Who said anything about betting?” I said. I paused a moment. “I want to take a second mortgage to start a business.”
She sat up and spun round to face me. “What sort of business?”
“A craft business. Metal spinning. I’ve done some research and I can buy a machine for a few grand. I’ve read about the process. It’s not that hard.”
She seemed lost for words. I studied her expression.
“I’ve always been good with my hands, Fran, and I like making things. I worked in shit jobs for 20 years and hated nearly every bloody day of it. With no education or trade training, I’ve got no more hope of finding a fulfilling job here than I had when I left the army. Less, probably. I don’t want to spend the rest of my working life doing something I hate. I might as well have stayed in the bloody army. At least it paid a decent wage.”
I opened the esky and helped myself to a beer and sat staring at the label. My pulse raced. I studied Fran’s anxious face and silently prayed I’d find a way to make her understand how desperately I wanted this chance.
“What do you plan to make?”
“Junk jewellery, souvenirs, badges. There’s heaps of stuff this machine can turn out.”
She considered my reply silently, understandably confused. I’d been secretly researching this for months, but it must have seemed to her that this came out of nowhere. She needed time. I agreed to drop the subject for the moment, but over the days that followed, I continued to plead. Eventually, she relented.
Three weeks later, she met me one morning on the wide steps of the local bank. We walked arm–in–arm down the long corridor to the manager’s office to listen to the compulsory reading of legal cautions and loan terms and nervously affix signatures to a ‘Second Mortgage’, adding $20,000 to our existing debt. The banker solemnly handed us a cheque book and explained that we had a $20,000 overdraft. Interest would be charged only on the largest outstanding balance during any given month. Fran left there white–faced and shaking. I couldn’t recall when I’d felt so optimistic and so happy.
Five months on, the money had almost run out and I had sunk into the depths of despair. Fran sat at the table one stormy Friday evening, peering over loss statements, telling me tearfully I would have to quit. I remained stubbornly determined to ignore all signs of defeat. I ripped up financial statements and threw them at her.
“Piss off with your fucking numbers. You’re so negative. All you want to do is tear me down.”
She knew that deep down I fretted and worried. She heard me tossing and turning at night. She knew that I worried about her. She found me on the verge of tears one day, after a casting failed. “I didn’t want you to know, Fran.” I said quietly. “I knew how it would upset you.”
Then, one windy late September Wednesday, she came home to find me whistling as I slid a bottle of her favourite champagne into the fridge. I turned to her with eyes dancing and my face glowing as I pulled a shiny badge from my pocket and flashed it at her joyfully.
“Look closely, my darling! You are looking at our ticket to business success,” I said, dropping it on the table.
It was odd shaped --- a curved section with a long tail on which the words “Harley Davidson” were engraved. It was shiny silver, not real silver of course. Polished monkey metal. It twinkled in the sunlight, so the words were hard to read. She seemed incapable of sharing my obvious enthusiasm.
“Well? You are supposed to be excited.”
“What is it?”
I gave an exasperated sigh. “A motorbike badge, for Harleys of course. I took an order today for 500 of these at 20 bucks a pair from a bike shop in Tweed Heads.”
She made no response, but just stared at me doubtfully.
“Five thousand dollars, Fran, and I can fill this order in two days.”
She turned it over thoughtfully. I struggled to suppress frustration.
“Five thousand dollars,” I repeated. “We based the business plan on taking less than half that each week, and if the badges take only two days to make, I’ll still have plenty of time to produce other stuff. And best of all, Hopo insists it must be all cash dealing.”
She sat forward with a start. “Why? Is there --- ”
“He’s a bikie, Fran. He sells to bikies. It’s a cash business, but it’s a great business. These guys love their bikes. They spend a fortune on them. Hopo reckons he can’t get enough of these things. I can make a thousand a week with ease. More maybe.” I studied her expression, bitterly disappointed by her lack of confidence.
“I’ll deliver the order next Monday” I said brightly. “Come with me, Fran. Meet Hopo. He’s quite a character. You’ll enjoy a day out. We can go shopping after. It’s a while since you’ve been to a city to shop, and I know you love it.”
She nodded silently, apparently not trusting herself to speak. I understood her fears. I struggled to believe too, but I had an order in my hand and a promise of more to come.
Hopo’s shop was in a back street, a rather grubby–looking shed–like structure with a dozen shiny Harleys lined up out front. Fran hated bikes, but she couldn’t help but admire the gleaming chrome–spoked wheels, the brightly coloured duco polished to a mirror shine, the long, plush, leather seats, and the shiny handlebars standing high and proud.
Inside, racks of spare parts of every description lined the walls and the smell of leather and chrome mixed with the pervasive stink of nicotine. Exhaust pipes, leather seats, handlebar grips, wheels. Along one wall, T–shirts and leather gloves. Up the middle, racks of heavy–lined leather jackets.
A streak of light from a high window danced over shiny helmets --- silver, red, purple, deep blues and greens --- all lined with deep–black leather padding. Boxes of decals and badges rested, tilted on the diagonal to display their contents, against the front edge of a wide wooden counter. No cash register --- just a tattered–looking docket book with a worn blue carbon sticking out from under the top page.
Behind the counter, Hopo! Long uncombed hair, scraggly beard, heavily pocked face with a deep, angry scar running down the left side from forehead to chin, and a huge crooked nose. His chin rested on an arm painted in reds and blues and purples --- every inch of flesh from bare shoulder to wrist covered with complicated designs featuring skulls and dragons and eagles and flames. An unbuttoned navy shirt --- frayed at the shoulder where the sleeve ought to have joined --- only partly covered a hairy painted chest. Even leaning over the counter, he towered over me. Thick, solid muscle pushed out tattooed skin. I hoped he didn’t notice Fran’s involuntary shudder.
“Wilson!” he exclaimed, straightening up and extending an enormous swarthy hand.
“Hopo. Meet my wife, Fran.”
He looked her up and down with an evil grin. “Lucky guy. She’s got curves in all the right places.”
I ignored the remark and placed a large box on the counter. Hopo lifted the flap and thrust his chin forward as he peered inside.
“I’ll need a minute to inspect and count them,” he said. “Want to make yourself and that pretty little sheila a coffee while you wait?” He pointed to a grubby sink set into a wooden bench littered with chipped cups, half–full coffee jar, and a jar of sugar caked and blackened from repeated dips with wet, soiled spoons.
“No thanks. I want to watch you. Can’t risk you stashing a few under the counter when I’m not looking and then accusing me of short–changing you.”
“You wouldn’t short–change me, mate. I’d knock your bloody block off if you tried,” Hopo chuckled, but his tone was cold and warning. He started examining the pieces, one by one. He set eight aside, pointing out what he claimed were imperfections. I saw no flaw, but I didn’t argue.
Fran whispered a complaint that her legs ached and her mouth was dry, but she had no appetite for his coffee. She was scanning shelves loaded with an astonishing variety of male jewellery, clothing, badges, wall plaques, miniature bikes. Everything embossed with the word “Harley”.
At last, Hopo was done. He reached under the counter and pulled out a large metal box. Fran gasped when he opened it. It bulged with 20, 50 and 100 dollar notes. I reckoned there must have been 50 grand in there. Hopo carefully counted out 5,000, then made a show of returning 100 to the box. He pushed the rest of the pile across the counter.
“Another batch next week?” I said, ignoring the small deficit in the payment.
Hopo nodded. “Told you, mate. Keep up the quality and I reckon I can move all you can make.”
“He scares me, Paul.” Fran said, driving away.
“He scares me, too,” I admitted, “but he’s OK as long as you don’t cross him. He’s got a reputation for being pretty nasty if he doesn’t get his own way, and he’s got some pretty unsavoury friends. Apparently some of that cash comes from drug dealing, but I prefer to know nothing about that.”
“God, Paul. Do you really want to do business with a guy like that.”
“For five grand an order? You bloody well betcha!”
The orders came through regularly, mostly for 200 at a time after the first three. Hopo frequently objected to non–existent flaws and short–changed us, but it didn’t matter. I returned from delivery trips with my wallet bulging. Fran dashed nervously from parking lot to bank door with bundles of cash, after extracting a few notes for the cash tin hidden in the back of the pantry. By the end of the following year we had paid off the business loan and I’d persuaded Fran there was enough spare change for me to pursue my long– cherished dream. I set aside five grand, opened an account with an SP bookie, and started to work my betting system.
~~~~
I was doing another Hopo delivery three days before Christmas. Fran was wildly excited that, for once, we wouldn’t do Christmas on a pauper’s budget. “Take me and the kids with you, Paul.” she pleaded. “We can do some Christmas shopping. You can distract the kids while I get their presents and then we can all go out for lunch.” She waited for a response, but when I was silent she continued eagerly. “That was one of the best things about Christmas when I was a kid. We always went shopping together and bought lunch out.”
“Christmas! Bah humbug!” I said with a chuckle, adding, “Sorry, guess I’m a bit like that character, Scrooge, was it? But for different reasons. I hate all the fuss and bother and the crowds. Do we really have to battle crowds of Christmas shoppers?”
“Don’t be such a wet blanket, Paul. We’ve always made Christmas special and fun. Remember that first one, in Singapore? We were so damn homesick, I cooked enough to feed 10 and we showered each other with so many gifts to try to make up for being alone and far from family, and then we made love on the living–room floor all afternoon.”
“I remember. It’s still bah humbug.” Then, after a pause, “OK. OK. If it will stop you nagging, I’ll take you with me and we’ll have lunch, but you can sit in the car while I do the delivery. I’m not taking you inside that place again.” My forceful tone caused an involuntary shudder.
“Fine. I don’t like Hopo anyway, but why is it such a big deal?”
“I overheard a conversation a few weeks ago. I didn’t like it at all.”
“What –”
“Told you he ran drugs, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“He had an unsavoury–looking fellow in there and they were talking about some woman Hopo had taken up with. It seems folks think he murdered her husband. Police interviewed him, but they couldn’t pin anything on him. Happened six years ago, apparently, so I guess he thinks he’s free and clear so he can be a bit careless about who he boasts to. I’m sure he didn’t mean me to hear though.”
“Shit, Paul! Murder! And you’re going to keep doing business with him?”
“Yes, I am. It’s none of my business, but I saw the way he looked at you and I don’t want him deciding he fancies you better than whoever it is he apparently thought was desirable enough to kill for.”
We set out early, kids all dressed up for a fun day out, planning what gifts to buy for each other, and Fran chatting happily about ideas for Christmas gifts for relatives. I was in a cheery mood, almost excited in fact. I told Fran I was planning to buy something really special for her, so she would have to take the kids off somewhere after lunch and let me organise surprises for all of them. “And not to see Santa either,” I added. “I want to take photos of them, and you, on Santa’s knee.”
“The kids are way past that,” she laughed, “and you definitely won’t get me up there.”
“Then how will I know what you wish for?”
“You just said you already had a plan.”
“I do.”
“So give me a hint.”
“You’ll just have to wait, my darling. You are just like a little kid at Christmas, and I’ll enjoy watching you struggle through the next few days in agonising suspense, wanting desperately to sneak a peek and not quite game.”
We stopped to buy ice creams before heading out to Hopo’s, and I left the kids to wait in the car with Fran while I finished my business. I thrust a large box under my arm and headed off into the store, whistling merrily.
They were all getting impatient when I finally emerged, still with the box under my arm, and holding the envelope Hopo had given me. My expression was, no doubt, as grim as his had been when he greeted me. I threw the box into the back of the car, slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door hard and thrust the envelope at Fran.
“Merry bloody Christmas,” I spat.
“What’s this?”
“A fucking Christmas card from Hopo. What do you think? Read it.”
The envelope had been torn open. She extracted a soiled and tattered page and carefully unfolded it. The letter was addressed very formally to Mr Hopo Niles, Tweed City Harleys. It bore that elegant, distinctive Harley–Davidson emblem at the top, and the print at the bottom declared the signatory “Director, Brand Management and Intellectual Property Protection, Harley–Davidson Australia.”
“It’s a warning about selling knock–offs, Fran. With a very polite explanation of Harley–Davidson’s licensing and quality–control terms.”
She stared at me blankly.
“The badges I make. The real deal cost $90 a pair. I couldn’t hope to produce a genuine product at that price, not with the licence fees they charge and their quality standards. Under patent law, they could take me for everything we own, and more, for making imitations.”
She was speechless, terrified. It was bad enough that we hadn’t been quite honest with the tax man. She excused that, because the tax office shafted us early in our marriage and we figured it owed us. But…
“Patent infringement? A patent owned by a company as powerful as Harley–Davidson? Shit, Paul!”
“Surely you must have realised the deal wasn’t quite legit? Jesus! How gullible are you, Fran?”
“You’re dealing with a drug–dealing bikie suspected of murder, making illegal product for him to buy from you for cash out of a tin that must contain around 50 grand in cash bills? Paul, have you completely lost your senses?”
“Can you show me a way to earn a decent living legally when the system has been shafting me since I was eight years old?” I paused for a moment to compose myself. My caustic tone lightened a little.
“Christ, Fran. Don’t go getting all self–righteous! We live in a dirty world. The people who get on well in it don’t do it by being proper and nice and law abiding. They do it by playing in the grey. And that’s all I did. The very pale grey, actually!”
“They don’t do it by getting into bed with drug–dealing murderers, that’s for sure!”
I started the engine before replying, then answered with far more certainty than I felt.
“Hopo isn’t the problem here. Dealing with him is perfectly safe as long as the deals are on his terms. I don’t argue when he claims to find a flaw or when he miscounts an order. I take what he’s happy to pay me, smile, shake hands and say thank you, and I keep him well away from my woman.”
“Not nearly far enough away for my liking,” she said sharply. “So what now? Where do you go from here?”
“Hopo won’t be placing any more orders, and I can’t risk looking for other customers like him. I have to stop, Fran. It’s too risky.”
“Of course you have to stop. You should never have started.”
“And if I hadn’t, we’d all be sleeping on the street instead of planning lunch with Santa Claus.” I slammed my fist into dashboard and glared at her. “And if you breathe a word about any of this to anyone, it won’t be Hopo you’ll have to be afraid of.”
My vicious tone no doubt transported her to an earlier time. Jealous rages, violent outbursts ending with broken china, holes in walls, and Fran engaging for days in futile attempts to mask a bruised cheek, split lip or black eye with makeup. It was all a long time ago, before I was reunited with a father who told me emphatically, after reprimanding me for raising my voice at her, that women were to be revered and honoured, treated with tenderness, and never spoken to in anger. My mother had added softly that for all the hardships she endured, she had seldom suffered a harsh word from her husband and he had punished his sons severely if they ever dared to show her disrespect.
Despite the reconciliation and my dad’s influence, the demons still hadn’t left me. I still feared those I loved deserting me, and I talked constantly of women betraying men and couples being incapable of staying faithful. Just a month ago, I had told her that my aunt and uncle separated, and I asked her when she would leave me.
“I won’t,” she had replied, but I countered with the comment that my aunt had been telling my uncle that for nearly 20 years.
“You see, Fran. Everyone I love lets me down. Everyone I trust betrays me.”
She knew I loved my aunt. What could she say? She tried to assure me that the failure of their marriage didn’t mean my aunt was deserting me, but there was no way to convince me. Ultimately, I didn’t give my aunt the chance to show me that I was mistaken. I cut her off, declaring that she was not worthy of my affection any more than she deserved her husband’s.
Fran watched me nervously, afraid to speak, and clearly distressed that the kids could hear. They sat in the back, white–faced and silent. I wrestled with remorse and rage. Finally, she summoned the courage to break the intolerable silence.
“What will you do, Paul?”
I pulled away from the kerb and started towards the mall. “Guess I’ll take these kids for lunch and shopping. Get this bah humbug business over with,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to spoil their fun.”
“I meant --- ”
“How will I earn a living, now that I’ve been fucked by the system again? The business wasn’t viable before I met Hopo. It won’t be viable after we part company.
“My racing system failed, Fran. I’ve been agonising for weeks over how to tell you I lost the whole bloody five grand. Nothing I do ever works out. Never can. The system has been screwing me since I was a little kid, and it will continue to screw everything I try to do. Some people are born to live shit lives. Obviously I’m one of them.”
~~~~
Despite the beauty and tranquillity of that beachside paradise, I continued to languish and waste after closing the business. I rose late, lingered sullen and morose over breakfast, stared blankly at the television set, snapped at the kids and battled with Fran over anything and nothing. Fran urged me to take up music again, but the trumpet rested in its case at the back of the wardrobe. My reading interest denigrated to mindless paperback westerns I could devour in an hour and never needed to finish reading anyway, because they were written to a formula with both action and ending entirely predictable. Fran complained that my conversation, when I consented to engage in any, consisted of nothing but whining, criticism and complaint. I was entirely unresponsive to her efforts --- or my children’s for that matter --- to engage my interest. Finally, fed up after months of watching me fritter away the days and shun her every attempt to motivate me, Fran snapped.
“You have responsibilities, Paul,” she screamed. “We have children to feed and educate. You need to find a job.”
“I had a job, Fran,” I replied. “One that damn near killed me. Remember? What if I had died?”
I punched the wall and kicked a dent in the kitchen door.
Over almost a year of unemployment, my mental state had steadily declined. However unsatisfactory and unfulfilling line work might have been, it had been a distraction. I had worked our little hobby farm before the move, too. I brought home four poddy calves and raised them and let them mate. I held the children, delighting in their innocent amazement while they watched in awe the miracle of birth. Now and again I’d fished for eel and we skinned and boiled it and dipped slices in batter to fry. We’d raised chickens, and the children delighted in fetching the eggs. When a hen went broody, they waited and watched anxiously for the tiny fluffy chickens to emerge.
The children had loved the farm, and I had loved watching them grow up there. It reminded me of my days at Ohio --- happy days when I had ambitions and dreams to cherish and I believed in myself and the things I could do. I’d been happy here as a child, too, but it was the scene of a beach holiday, and I guess I was intent on treating my life here now as one long vacation.
After my business failed, I tinkered in my shed on occasion, but without purpose. I sat in front of the television set from before dinner to late into the night.
“You are so clever with your hands, Paul. Can’t you find some good use for that talent?” Fran pleaded.
“What do you suggest, Fran? Make Harley–Davidson badges, perhaps? Or should I try for adult training in leatherwork or carpentry? I was too old and too stupid at 25, when the army owed me paid retraining, remember? What hope would I have at 39, huh?”
“Do something with your music, then.”
“God, Fran! What’s wrong with your fucking memory? My music qualifications aren’t worth the fucking paper they’re written on. I sat exams in the army, but I might as well have spent my time on a fucking desert island cracking coconuts! All that wasted effort. For what?”
“Paul, there must be something you can do. You can drive. Get a taxi licence.”
“Spend my days dodging maniacs and being abused by fat bitches with snotty–nosed whining kids, rude, impatient businessmen always in a hurry, or drunk teenagers emptying their guts on the way home from the club at two in the morning. I’d last five minutes. I’d lose it completely and kill a passenger before I got through my first day.”
“There must be something. I can’t stand seeing you like this. It’s driving me insane, and it’s disruptive and distressing for the kids. Your bad temper scares me. If you don’t pull yourself together and –”
“What? You’ll leave me? Well go on. Piss off, Fran. Just bugger off and leave me in peace.”
“You realise you’re destroying yourself?” “So clear out and let me get on with it.” “You don’t mean that, Paul.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Fran. You think I need you? You think you can hurt me by leaving. You’ve forgotten a lot of things, it seems. People come and people go in my life and once they go I never think of them again. I don’t need anyone. I can be happy in a bull’s–head tent in the middle of nowhere. All I want is to be left alone.”
“Fine. I’ll leave you alone, but you can leave, Paul. This is mine and my children’s home, and I’m not giving it up. If you want to spend your life wallowing in self–pity, go do it somewhere where it won’t ruin mine and our children’s happiness.”
I stood up and threw my chair across the room, then stormed into the bedroom, thrust an open suitcase on the bed and began carelessly throwing clothing from the wardrobe. I pulled drawers from the dresser and tipped their contents into the case, thrusting them upended on the floor as each was emptied. Slamming into the bathroom, I dragged drawers from the vanity and upended them. After selecting items from the medicine chest, I swept an open hand across the shelves and sent their contents smashing into the basin below. In my rage, I found the sounds of shattering bottles perversely comforting.
Misty visions of nuns and scowling soldiers with stripes on their sleeves appeared. I wished they would take form so that I could punch their faces in. I wished Wicks --- the employment officer who denied me retraining --- would appear. I wanted to push him down, squat on his pot belly, clench my fingers around his bulging red neck, stare into wild yes, and slowly… ever so slowly… squeeze the air out of him. I wanted to hear him gurgle and splutter and squeak, and see the colour drain from his whisky–reddened cheeks and watch his goggling eyes begging for mercy. Maybe I would ease my grip, now and again, just enough so he could ask me why and utter a plea, and I could reply with a mocking laugh and increased pressure. I would not explain myself --- never let him know how his abuse of power had hurt me. Even as he breathed his last breath, I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how he made me suffer.
I kicked the front door shut behind me, thrust my suitcase in the back seat of the car, and booted the car door closed. Folding myself into the driver’s seat, I revved the car motor mercilessly, grated the gears, and careered --- tyres throwing up clouds of thick dust --- down the back road to the highway. At the corner, the speeding vehicle skidded to a stop, and then, with another wheel spin, I took off and swung on to the highway.
Nearly 12 hours later, now outwardly calm, I turned into a government housing estate and parked in front of the neat little cottage Mum and Dad now called home. The Housing Authority had moved them from the shack shortly after Rob’s wedding, in response to intense lobbying by Carly.
“Paul! What a wonderful surprise,” Mum said, hugging me. “Fran and the kids not with you?”
“Fran’s working. Couldn’t take the kids out of school,” I said, trying a little too hard to show no emotion.
I hadn’t planned to visit my family. The decade–old Holden wagon I’d taken such pride in restoring often seemed to have a mind of its own. It knew its way home --- not that I’d ever regarded my parents’ house as ‘home’. I still had mixed emotions when I thought of Fred and Elsie. At first I’d found it awkward calling them ‘Mum and Dad’, but when I observed Fran using those titles with ease I followed her lead, and I discovered delight in hearing them call me ‘son’.
Whenever I visited my folks I made small talk and helped out with household chores. Occasionally, I’d play my trumpet for Mum and Dad, and it thrilled them. There was love in my mother’s eyes when she looked at me, and pride written in the creases of Dad’s half–smile. When they spoke to me, it was as if to a son from whom they had never been parted, but there was an awkwardness in my responses. I worked hard and successfully to hide it, as I had always worked to hide every emotion. Paul Wilson was a polished pretender.
My brothers had become mates. I drank with them and joined their fishing and shooting expeditions. I went with them, sometimes, to the shearing sheds to watch them work the sheep to make mountains of soft, oily fleece, but there was always a distance between us. Fran and I did not belong to that parched, dusty place. There was no air of possession when I surveyed the wire–fenced paddocks littered with black bubbles of sheep dung and dry, cracked cow pats hosting beetle colonies. It was with the apparent discomfort typical of a city slicker that I swiped at the bothering flies and pulled my shirt collar high and my hat low over my pale face to block the savage western sun. And I caught the mildly contemptuous glances of my deep–tanned, bare–chested brothers. So like them that I was often mistaken for one or the other of them, I was nonetheless a misfit among the cockies and the shearers. I didn’t speak their language. I didn’t understand their culture. I was a foreigner in this land of my birth and I could never think of it as ‘home’.
We rarely spoke of my childhood, although Dad told me he had once walked over 70 miles each way to try and see me, only to be told I wasn’t there. I remembered that day --- the lock-down --- the nuns’ report of a vagabond peeping tom. I had glimpsed a shadowy figure through the window as they marched us upstairs. Had I known it was my father I might have called out, and he might have heard me, but they sent him away.
When Dad asked me about my life, I told him I got on just fine. Fred winked and said, “Resilient you are, like me. I always knew you were a chip off the old block. I knew you would be OK.”
I would never do or say anything to compound my parents’ suffering or to reduce their joy in having me back. From arrival to departure I played my part to perfection, but whenever I left there I was an actor leaving the stage. And yet, I was uncomfortable in my own world too --- like the immigrant struggling to assimilate, yet craving to return to the motherland. It seemed there was nowhere I could feel at ease, but now, with my marriage ended, there seemed no place else to go but back to the first family I had lost.
“So what brings you out here at this time of year?” Dad asked.
I shrugged. “Just felt like seeing my bros, and doing some fishing.” My tone was deliberately nonchalant. “Your brothers are working.”
“I’ll find ways to amuse myself. Maybe I’ll go out to the sheds with them, and I’ll see them on the weekends and in the evenings.”
Dad shrugged, went to fridge and fetched two stubbies. He handed one to me and sat down in front of the television set. I sat down opposite him.
“Who’s winning?” There was a rugby league game in progress. Mum busied herself preparing the evening meal while Dad and I sat watching, very occasionally cheering a player or disputing a referee decision, but not in any conversational exchange. Very few words passed between us.
I went to visit a brother after the evening meal. I came back late, heavily inebriated, to announce that I was going to the sheds next day to watch the shearing. Mum nodded and said, “I thought you might. I packed a lunch for you just in case. It’s in the fridge, and there’s an esky in the laundry and some ice bricks in the freezer.”
I said goodnight and promised to try not to wake her leaving in the morning. “You forgot to take your lunch, son,” she said, when I came in the following afternoon. She placed a pot of tea on the table and went to the cupboard for cups.
“I took it, Mum. It was really good, thanks.”
Puzzled, she pulled a lunch box from the fridge and held it up.
“Must ’ave grabbed the wrong one. I had a chicken leg and two sandwiches and a piece of fruitcake.”
“That was your morning tea,” she replied. “This one was lunch.”
I laughed. “Geez, Mum. I went for a day, not a week.”
“I’m used to feeding workmen,” she replied. “Your brothers work hard so they need plenty of fuel to keep them running.”
I shrugged, but said nothing.
“Never was out of work a day in me life apart from when I was sick,” Dad said. “Boys neither. Tough sometimes, findin’ work out here, but we do. E’en if the pay and conditions is lousy an’ we ’ave t’ travel a’ways.”
I suspected my father’s statement might be loaded, but I gave no reply. I hadn’t told my family I wasn’t working, and I couldn’t imagine any way they would know.
I visited my sister the following day. Sandra was the young Elsie --- auburn highlights in a mop of tightly curled golden–brown hair, finely carved features, radiant complexion, and those same talkative eyes. All that distinguished her from our mother was the absence of stick limbs and wrinkles and that slight sagging of the shoulders that had for so long borne the weight of guilt and almost unbearable sorrow.
“God, Paul! What are you doing here?” “Visiting family.”
Did everyone have to demand explanation?
“Fran and the kids with you?” “No. Just me.”
Puzzle lines appeared briefly on Sandra’s forehead, but she composed herself quickly. “Want a cuppa?”
“Wouldn’t say no.”
“So what are you doing for a quid these days? Not just being a beach bum, I hope! Lucky bastard! Living in paradise!”
“I’m working on an invention,” I replied, ignoring her ‘too close for comfort’ comment and hoping she didn’t have extrasensory perception or access to a gossip hotline. I knew Fran would never expose my secrets to my family.
Always innovative, and quick to find inventive ways to manage challenging tasks, I had twice tried my hand at inventing for commercial return. Not long after I left the army, I came up with an idea that, in hindsight, might have made me quite wealthy had I understood, back then, about intellectual property protection and commercialisation. Struggling with a dramatically changed routine --- no longer working until the early hours of the morning --- I’d installed a television set in the bedroom and formed the habit of going to sleep with the television on. It drove Fran crazy, but I couldn’t go to sleep without the distraction. In a quiet room, my mind raced and the demons plagued me.
Back then, the television channels shut down in the very early hours of the morning with a rather loud pop. Inevitably, it woke Fran. She complained endlessly about the interruption to her sleep. To solve the problem, I made a timer that plugged into a power point and turned off the power at a pre– set time. It was clumsy in appearance, but it worked a treat and I used it to impressive effect for a couple of years to switch off the television after I fell asleep. When it wore out, I took it to the local electrical store, showed them the concept, and asked if such a device was available for purchase. It wasn’t then, but within months the highly successful Krambrook timer appeared on the market.
During my time on the electrical lines I invented a service termination clamp for securing electrical lines to poles and houses. The device in use at the time was awkward to apply, especially in cold weather. I came up with a novel alternative. This time I followed all the right pre-commercialisation processes to test it and assess its appeal to those who would use it.
The market for such a device was tightly defined. A single distributor sold all devices of that type to electricity authorities nationwide. I approached the company and demonstrated my invention. They were impressed. For a brief moment, I dared to hope that they might license it and made excited calculations of how many they sold annually and what the royalties might be. Ultimately, they announced that they had just invested hundreds of thousands in new machinery to make the existing model. Regardless of the superiority of design of a possible alternative, they would need to continue marketing the existing product exclusively for nearly a decade to justify their investment. They suggested I might talk to them again in eight years’ time. Eight years later, I had moved on.
My answer to Sandra wasn’t exactly a lie. I’d been nurturing an idea… even tinkering a little, but my efforts hardly qualified as ‘doing something for a quid’. I felt my cheeks flush a little as guilt stabbed at my heart and chiding voices shouted in my brain.
“Do you really make money from inventions?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It’s hard, and it’s risky.”
Guilt gnawed at me now. Its incessant chewing made my heart gallop and my chest hurt and my head throb. Silence hung heavily, broken only by an occasional hushed slurping or gulping sound as we swallowed tea and the odd soft thud as a mug was placed on the table between sips. Tension magnified the sounds. I searched for words that might be appropriate to speak to break the awkwardness.
“Mum and Dad would have been thrilled to see you,” said Sandra.
I just nodded. Then a random thought crystallised and suddenly became a burning question.
“How was it, Sandra,” I asked, “that after 18 years I could walk back into your lives and for Mum and Dad and all of you it was as if we’d never missed a day?”
“Because you were always there, Paul,” she replied. The response was quick and unhesitant, but she paused after and I noticed that her eyes were watering.
“You were always part of us. Mum and Dad talked about you every day. Told us how much they loved you and talked about the letters they wrote you, the occasional little gift they sent. Talked about how one day you and Jen would come back and we’d be a family again.”
Letters? Gifts? I never received any.
Fran’s mother had told me the nuns burnt the mail in the fireplace in the living room. It was disruptive, they said, for children to stay in contact with a family to whom they could never return. My mum had sent me a little battery-operated boat once, but the nuns put it away and gave it to me months later. It was the only gift I was ever given in all the years I spent at St Patrick’s. I was never told where it came from. I found out when I was 30. Mum asked, just out of the blue one day, if I liked the gift she sent for my ninth birthday.
The boat was broken when they gave it to me, but I’d fixed it, and I’d thought myself very inventive. Pity I couldn’t put that talent to some productive use.
“They never gave up hoping,” Sandra was saying, unaware that I was lost in recollections. “And they never stopped trying, despite all the knockbacks. I often wondered where they got the strength.”
I looked up, and my face asked the questions I could never bring myself to speak.
“I remember the social workers coming to visit,” Sandra said sadly. “I was only a little kid, but I remember it so well because Dad would go quite crazy after. One time, he thought he was back in the war, so he got his rifle and laid down behind a little hill. Mum was scared he might shoot one of us. He seemed to think we were all Japs.”
I shuddered. The tales of torture I’d heard in Singapore came flooding back. It hadn’t occurred to me that the effects, so long after, could be that dramatic.
“There was that one time,” Sandra continued, “when they wanted Dad’s consent for you to join the army. He raged about the place for days after screaming ‘No son of mine is going in the bloody army. They’re not putting no bloody uniform on my boy, not after what I went through’. He was so angry us kids were scared to go near him.
“He begged the officer to send you home,” she said sadly. “I think they told him you didn’t want to come. You were dead keen to join the army, with or without Dad’s consent.”
“Lying bastard,” I said, and refilled my tea.
“There was another time, a bit later --- ”
“Later? Why would they come again later?”
“I think you were being sent to Vietnam or something. That was the time Dad really went berserk.”
My jaw dropped. “He knew about that posting?”
“He knew pretty much everything, Paul. Mum and Dad somehow kept up with everything you did. Social workers in the early days. Later, they had a spy somewhere.”
Uncle Bill? Why wouldn’t he tell me he was in touch with them?
“Yet they never tried to make contact after I was grown–up,” I said, struggling to maintain an even tone. “After I could make my own choices about replying.”
“They insisted you had to make the first move. When you made no contact, they figured you wanted nothing to do with them. They said they couldn’t blame you for that, but I know it broke their hearts.”
“They had a shit of a life, Sandra. A real shit of a life!”
“They made the best of it, Paul. I never heard Dad complain, and he always told us to treat every day as an adventure and a challenge. Mum always said the only real failure in life was hurting someone, but Dad said it was not having a go.”
I smiled. “I remember them saying that stuff to me when I was a little kid, before they took me away. And one time, in the pub, after Dad ripped into me for yelling at Fran, a few beers made him suddenly very philosophical. He looked up at me and said, ‘Let me give y’ a little fatherly advice, son. I know it’s prob’ly far too little, but hopefully not too late. Young blokes have such big ambitions, and hopefully you can realise some of yours. But if y’ can get through life without doin’ anyone any harm, feed your kids, and treat your wife like a woman should be treated, you’ve done OK. For the rest of it, jus’ make the best of what fate deals out. In the end, the only real choice any of us gets is what attitude to take an’ how to treat others’.”
Sandra smiled. “That sounds like Dad. He’s a smart man, you know? Given half a chance, he could have achieved a lot in his life.”
“Yeah. I remember him making whips and breaking horses. He was bloody brilliant with animals, and such a hard worker. Guess he just never got a lucky break, poor bastard. And then they took his kids away.”
Sandra reached across and put her hand on mine. “He won through in the end, Paul. He got his son back.”
“Small compensation, though. Look at him, Sandra. Look at Mum. What reason have they got to get up in the morning?”
“Mum would say she’s blessed. She lived to see her sons and daughters making a success of their lives and giving her beautiful grandchildren to spoil. What more is there for people like us, Paul? Different for you maybe. You had opportunities --- music school, boxing lessons, overseas travel, a chance to buy a house of your own, go into business. Mum and Dad couldn’t do more for us than feed and clothe us... and love us.”
I studied her expression. Her words echoed, feeding my guilt.
Maybe that’s what’s made me so discontent? I tasted a more fortunate life, but it was so plastic... so hollow.
“Guess that’s what was missing for me, Sandra. Their love. In the end, I think that’s all that really matters. Feeling safe and cared for. Belonging.” Sandra sniffed and ran the back of her hand across her cheek.
“You always had their love, Paul. Now you have the chance to feel it. Enjoy!”
#
Ian organised a barbecue on the weekend. Dad, not in the best of health of late, was settled in a rocking chair on the veranda with a rug over his knees. A thick haze of smoke hung in the air and the aroma of grilling meat competed with the smell of hops and malt as we cracked our stubbies. Fred dozed a little. When he woke, Carly was seated beside him. He reached across and touched her hand lightly, and I somehow felt, rather than heard, his faint whisper.
“Look at that,” he said, “My six sons all together. After all those years apart, it’s near enough to make a grown man cry.” He had never seen all his children together, and this was only the second time that he’d seen all his sons together.
Talk of the war was taboo around Dad, but he talked to me about it that day. He told me how it was in prison. He laughed about catching cockroaches and swapping them with the Japanese guards for rats, because rats were more to his taste and more nutritious.
“You were in Singapore, yeah?” he said suddenly, turning to me.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said, glancing at Ian with a look of concern. I wondered if I ought to be changing the subject, but remembering didn’t seem to be distressing the old man. “For some of our time there, Fran and I lived in what used to be the Changi prison camp.”
“There was a lovely Chinese gal. Used t’ work in the prison,” he said, smiling at the memory. “Hired by the Jap guards, but she used t’ smuggle mail in and out and bring medicines t’ sick prisoners. I had shrapnel wounds in both me legs when I was captured. Real bad. Infected. That little gal brought a bottle of grubbies in and put ’em into the wound t’ eat the infection. I’d a’ prob’ly died otherwise.”
He turned and looked at me earnestly. “Don’t y’ go telling y’ mum, but I think I was a little bit in love with that gal. She was my angel of mercy. She was very beautiful.”
A shrivelled and stooped old hawker bearing baskets of children’s clothing shuffled out from the depths of my memory. When I told Dad I’d bought baby clothes from his angel, a single tear rolled down the old man’s cheek.
#
An idea was forming in my mind as I drove back to Ballina, contrite, and determined to repair my marriage. I struggled to focus, but Sandra’s quotes of my parents’ advice played over and over in my head like a broken tape on a player with no off button. The fear demon drifted in, but I blew it out with a deep breath, reminding myself of Fran’s loyalty and tolerance over so many years. Then it drifted in again and reminded me that everyone has a breaking point. Had she finally reached it?
Please God let her give me one more chance. I won’t blow it again.
The guilt demon whipped me and shouted curses at me for not having my father’s strength of character, mocking me for not accepting the faith so that my prayers could be answered. I reminded God that He had deserted me when I was just a little boy, long before I knew about faith. I cursed Simms for denying me the benefit of being raised by a man who would have taught me how to treat a woman. I cursed the nuns for making me hate women, and turning me against God --- if there was one.
I stopped the car, got out, and stood leaning against the passenger door watching the sun sink behind the hills, painting the sky around them brilliant pink and soft orange, and turning the hills from green to grey, then a menacing black. And then the yellow moon climbed into the sky and its light danced over the black hills. All my guilt and fear disappeared behind the horizon with the sun. Hope rose with the moon, and I got back into the car focused on my idea.
My youngest daughter had given us a scare when she was very small. I found her, late one night when Fran was fast asleep, lying grey and deathly still in her cot. Thankful for my first–aid training, I revived her. For years after, I read everything I could find on sudden infant death syndrome and conceived wild ideas for devices to alert a parent of worrying changes in a baby’s vital signs. As I drove, an image of the ideal device presented itself. I began to mentally dissect it and examine the componentry. I detoured to Brisbane and a specialist electrical store, and arrived home with a supply of tools and parts and brimming over with excited anticipation.
Fran asked no questions. She was well accustomed to me taking time out to battle my demons. When I emerged victorious, she celebrated privately and prayed my tormentors would stay away. She welcomed me home and helped me unpack. I hugged her and kissed her and told her I loved her deeply and I could never leave her. Then I told her that my sister had talked some sense into me and things would be better from now on.
Two weeks later, she leapt for joy when I announced I’d seen a job ad of interest and planned to apply. It was casual work --- only two days a week and lousy pay --- but it was something. In fact, it was something I believed I could actually enjoy.
I applied for the position of swab steward on the race track thinking I hadn’t a hope of success, but I had always loved horses. Although I rarely wagered money after that one disastrous experiment in which I lost the entire five grand, I was still committed to the belief that the system I’d developed could potentially win millions. I followed it religiously, calculating the winnings on paper. I know it drove Fran mad, because it became quite an obsession.
At the job interview, I was asked three times if I could ride a horse. I hadn’t been on one since childhood. Although the men on the committee seemed unconcerned with my negative reply, I was worried it had destroyed my chances. Eventually, frustrated with the repeated questions, and rather aggro with the ugly bitch who kept interrupting an otherwise intelligent interview with stupid challenges, I looked squarely at the inquirer and said, “I thought I only had to collect their piss. I didn’t think the job involved riding the bastards”.
There it was again --- that self–destructive arrogance that always seemed to get in the way of building a career. To my surprise, this time it impressed. The job required someone who could assert authority. That had never been me, but I fell into the role comfortably and enjoyed the job. I discovered an affinity with animals, and, like my dad, I handled the most difficult horses with ease.
“Dad was the horse whisperer,” I told Fran. “He could break a wild horse without ever touching it. He’d just walk up to the animal and talk to it softly, give it something to eat maybe, and in minutes it would be following him around the paddock. He was a bloody good horse trainer. Had a way with them. Maybe I’ve inherited some of that talent.”
Fran smiled, pleased to see me confident there was something I could do well.
If only the job was full–time and paid better.
Between race days, I worked in my shed with an intensity Fran had never witnessed before. At the end of the month, I showed her some complicated drawings and announced my desire to consult a patent attorney. The designs for my SIDS Alert --- a watch–like device for babies, intended to send a signal to an alarm device worn by a parent if a baby’s vital signs changed unfavourably --- was complete.
I was certain this invention was destined to be a success.
~~~~
I never wrote letters, and seldom received any, so it must have surprised Fran to find an envelope bearing my handwritten name in the Thursday morning mail. It was from my Ohio ‘brother’, Peter. A short note advised that his mother, Ede, had passed away a few days earlier and was to be buried in Perth the following Saturday morning.
“I’ll book a flight for you,” Fran said, wrapping her arms around me.
“Why?” I replied coldly, shrugging her off.
“Your best friend’s mother just died. Surely you want to be at her funeral?”
“I’ll send flowers.”
“She was your mother too, for three years. You loved her, Paul. All the stories you told about her and the way she cared for you at Ohio –”
“She wasn’t my mother. She was my carer. She was paid to look after kids who had no–one else to care about them. She did her job well and she was always there when I needed her. She was there with a broad smile at breakfast. When I came home from school, she was there with a big slice of cake. When I came in from footie training in the afternoon, she was there offering a drink, and a bandaid if I’d scraped my knee or elbow. She was there in the library at night or in the pottery shed when I felt like talking about my day or listening to her war stories. Then one day I had to move into another world, and she wasn’t there anymore. That’s not a mother. Mothers are forever. She was no more a mother to me than my birth mother. I feel sorry for Peter, but otherwise her death is of no concern to me.”
Fran looked distressed. “You don’t mean that. It’s a cover–up. You do this when you’re hurting.”
“Hurting? Why would I be hurting? You forget. I’m not like other people. I don’t have feelings. I learnt not to feel when I was very young --- especially not to feel upset at people going out of my life, whether by dying or otherwise. That’s all my life was. People coming into it and people going out of it. If I let it affect me --- ”
I stood up and walked to the fridge to fetch a beer. Fran watched, speechless for a moment. “You could have written to her. From Balcombe. You could have visited in the holidays.”
“Why? What interest would she have in me? Dozens of kids came and went from her life. She was paid to look after them for a time, that’s all. Then they went away and another kid took their place.”
“That’s not how it was for the Ede I met, nor for the Ede you described to me when you talked about your years at Ohio.”
“We can’t afford the plane fare. Does that reason suit you better?”
“Why do you act this way whenever something upsets you? You’re so gentle and caring when things are going well. Then something bad happens and you’re someone else.”
Guilt weighed heavily on me. I tried to thrust its weight from my shoulders with a shrug and a silent reminder that Ede was only a part of my life for a brief time, but a niggling little pain stabbed at my heart. I secretly longed to hear her melodic laugh and see those big breasts heaving, the abundant flesh on those warm arms rippling, and Welsh eyes dancing as she passed me a huge slice of chocolate cake.
“I’ll order flowers,” Fran said. “What would you like written on the card?”
“How should I know what to write? Write whatever you please.”
I sat up late drinking and Fran knew I was grieving. I loved Ede, but, like my own mother, she had suddenly ceased to be there when I needed her, and it hurt too much to allow myself to care.
#
“Dinner!” I said, before Fran could ask the usual irritating question. I waved a fresh fish in her face.
“Bet you bought that at the Fisho on the way home.”
“Actually, our daughter caught it. Funniest thing you ever saw. I tried to show her how to cast the rod, but she flicked it into the shallows not six inches from her toe and the hook went straight through the poor fish’s top lip. Must be the unluckiest flathead this side of the equator.”
“Did you boys catch anything?” she laughed.
“A hundred and twenty bucks on an eight to one winner.” I drew a deep breath, waiting for the rebuke.
Nope! Just that look!
“It was one bet, Fran, and it was a sure thing. I don’t study form so intently for nothing. I keep telling you I could make a fortune with this system.”
She turned her attention to the fish. I moved behind her, wrapped my arms around her and fondled her breasts.
“How about I take you out tomorrow and buy you a sexy new dress, then take you somewhere nice for dinner?”
“How about you don’t! Thank you for the thought, but we can’t afford it. Not even with a windfall. How about you promise me you won’t risk our hard–earned money betting on racehorses, and you’ll take the kids out more often.”
“I’ll take the kids out more often. We had the best day, Fran. It was great.” A blanket of happiness wrapped itself around me that Saturday night as I watched Fran preparing that fish dinner.
“Have you been told today?” I asked her, “You’re beautiful.”
“Compliments will get you everywhere,” she laughed, “except forgiveness for betting on horses. By the way, someone phoned for you earlier. I wrote the name and number on the pad by the phone.”
I recognised the name and hastened to dial the number. I hadn’t told Fran of my audition two days earlier for a role as one of the lead trumpets in a Bavarian band. It was enough for one of us to suffer another disappointment.
“Paul! I’ve been waiting for your call.” Wilf said. He sounded upbeat. Could I dare to be hopeful? “Can you come in tomorrow? I’d like to organise a vest and hat for you and give you some music to rehearse. Your first gig is next Saturday night.”
I was dancing with Fran, singing “The Chicken Dance” and floating on air, when Rob rang.
“Dad was flown to Dubbo Hospital this afternoon. It’s bad, Paul. Real bad.”
I was on the highway inside an hour and I drove all night without a stop except for petrol. I stayed with him three days, barely sleeping --- catnaps in the chair beside him. On the third day, Fred rallied. He sat up and ate and talked with us.
“Don’t you boys have something better to do than just sit there? Like fetch your old man a smoke and a beer, maybe?”
“I said I would come visit you again soon,” I replied. “You didn’t have to resort to scaring us all half to death to get attention, you old bastard.”
“Hey, you! A little respect for your father please,” he boomed, responding exactly as I had hoped. There were audible sighs of relief at the quickness of it and the strength in his voice.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said with pretended contrition, failing to suppress a chuckle. Fred caught the silent conversation between my brothers and I, and said, “Cheeky buggers, the lot of youse,” and then he laughed and it was deep and hearty.
“Go home, son,” he said, addressing me. “Doc says I’ll be back home by Sunday. Bring the family out to visit, eh? And bring that trumpet. You know Mum loves to hear you play.”
I'm not sure how I managed to drive home, but Fran was beside herself waiting for me. Rob had phoned to ask her to call him as soon as I arrived. He told her I was in no condition to drive and he had begged me to stay and rest. I would never tell Rob --- because he would insist on paying --- but I really couldn’t afford a motel bed. The car was way too cramped for sleeping. Besides, I was desperate to get my music and practise. I had to make a good show of my first performance.
Too tired even to eat, I collapsed into bed and was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow. I had been asleep only about an hour when Fran ran to answer the phone. She caught it at the start of the second ring, but I heard it and leapt out of bed. I entered the kitchen to hear her whispering. She put the phone down and looked up to see me standing there, and her eyes told me. She hugged me close, and for --- I think --- only the third time since they took me away, I cried. This time I felt no shame.
We were on the road within hours. I drove for 13 hours, so consumed with grief and the need to be with my mother and family that I wasn’t aware of being tired.
We passed through the government housing estate on the way to Ian’s house. Living in that estate, Mum and Dad finally had electricity, running water and a proper bathroom. Mum was in heaven. I felt a little ashamed recalling how I’d complained when Fran suggested we apply for government housing.
We gathered at Ian’s house to discuss funeral arrangements, and I felt strangely lost and disconnected from my family’s grief. I was suddenly painfully aware that the man whose funeral we were planning was virtually a stranger. The stories my brothers told of growing up in his company left me feeling distant and empty, and asking myself if a man, once cut from his roots, can ever really reconnect.
I went with my mother and held her while she viewed my dad’s still corpse, all dressed up in his worn ill–fitting suit with his thin hair slicked over his forehead just the way he used to wear it. I took her home to dress for the funeral and found a coat and tie in my father’s wardrobe for one of my younger brothers to wear. Then I joined my five younger brothers at the little local church to carry my father to his grave.
Jen came to the funeral. She didn’t want to. She insisted she had no parents. “A mother and father are supposed to take care of you,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “those two strangers didn’t do that for me.”
I had seen far too little of Jen since Fran and I married. Living so far away and on a tight budget, with both of us busy with our own lives and families, there were few opportunities to get together. We talked on the phone regularly. Jen told me over and over that I was her rock. She didn’t need to be close to me; she just needed to know I was there if she needed me. I always would be. I had never forgotten my promise to take care of her.
Her husband had insisted she should come. I was delighted to see her, but she stood aloof, near the cemetery gate, not wanting to join the others to throw flowers in the grave. I went to her when they started to cover Dad over.
“Go back to the others, Paul,” she said. “You belong with them.”
She paused to look into my eyes for a moment, then added angrily, “Have you forgotten what we suffered, and who caused it? He betrayed us, Paul”.
It took me a long time to answer. My stomach churned and my head spun as I mentally phrased my reply, experimenting with a dozen ways to say it. At last, I took her hand and started to lead her to the graveside. She resisted, but I pulled her firmly along behind me and wouldn’t let her go. The others had propped a single floral wreath against a small white wooden cross and stepped away by the time we reached the little mound of freshly turned red– brown mud.
“Stand here with me, Jen,” I said, “and say goodbye to our father.”
“I told you, Paul, he’s not --- ”
“Jen, listen. Dad did the best he could with what he had. He loved us, but he let us down. He wasn’t able to protect us. Would I have done better in his shoes? Would you, as a mother, if you faced the challenges our parents confronted? I don’t know and neither do you, but I know this, Jen.” I drew a deep breath.
“We were dealt a bad hand. We had a shit of a life as children and we didn’t deserve it. No child should suffer as we did, and the pain continued long after we became adults. Maybe it will never really end. But we have to choose now. We can put it behind us and get on with making the best of the rest of our lives, or we can let the past ruin all our tomorrows. Me? I’m taking the first option. I’m going with my brothers and sisters now to toast my father’s life, and then I’m going to take my wife out to dinner and celebrate the first day of the rest of our lives --- lives that are going to be very full and very happy.”
#
I acted the part well at Dad’s funeral, and after, but if it passed comment it didn’t escape my attention that not a single sympathy card was addressed to me. Few of those to whom my parents had bragged about their eldest son knew me, beyond a cursory ‘hello’ on the infrequent occasions of my visits. The sympathisers’ children had grown up with my brothers and sisters. Dad had worked with them and for them. For most of the years they knew our family, I did not exist outside the privacy of the home in which my removal was so deeply mourned.
Those who did know me seemed to assume I had come to terms with my loss a very long time ago, or maybe that the death of a man they believed betrayed and deserted me was no great tragedy. No doubt my stoicism supported that view.
In reality, the void left by the loss of my dad was all the more painful because I had missed out on so much of him. I had been given just a few short years to get to know him again, to make up for all the time we missed and the special occasions we ought to have shared. Now the opportunity was gone. I was left with an irritating, irrational voice asking me over and over, “After all you endured, how could he leave you again?”.
I fought the nagging feeling of betrayal, but it took months to recover from the dreadful emptiness overwhelming me. The hatred for Simms returned and the demons urged me again to find him and kill him. An awful hunger for revenge was accompanied by a burning desire to destroy the establishment and everyone who supported and endorsed it.
I finally told Fran, after the funeral, how for so long I had nurtured an ambition to find Simms and kill him. She dismissed my claim with the comment, “If he walked into a pub and stole your beer, you would do no more than threaten him”.
“I was trained to kill,” I protested, popping the cap off another stubby. “If I wanted to, I could kill a man without a sound and without a shred of evidence left behind.”
“Bullshit, Paul. You couldn’t and you wouldn’t. You were trained as a musician, not a killer. Maybe, if you’d gone to Vietnam. Now you wouldn’t even volunteer, even if someone tortured you to try to make you.”
“That’s one thing you got right! Fight for this fucking country? No fucking way. Look what this grand nation did to Dad. He goes off to war at age 20 to defend the cause of freedom and protect his fellow Australians. Comes back broken, beaten, half–starved and disease–ridden after suffering torture most Australians couldn’t even begin to imagine.”
I sat at our dining table, sipping beer and gazing through the kitchen window at the kids romping in the yard, remembering the sneer on Simms’ face when he saw the humble shack my father called home.
“Then that Simms prick and an arsehole fucking judge take the most precious goddamn things in his world in preference to helping him get the pension benefit he’s legally entitled to. Took his kids away, for Christ’s sake! Killed any shred of self–respect the poor broken bastard had left. Broke his wife’s heart and sentenced them both to a life of misery.” I took a deep swig of beer, but the ale didn’t drown the rancour. “You think Simms didn’t deserve to die? And I’ll bet the mongrel never saw a uniform let alone action. Probably faked disability! Or if he did join, he was in B–company, or he sat in a plush office with pips on his bloody shoulder and made dumb decisions that cost the lives of good men.”
“I think he probably deserved a lot worse than death, Paul,” Fran whispered. “Death would have been far too easy, but you were right when you lectured Jenny at the funeral. Take your own counsel. You don’t fix the past by destroying yourself exacting revenge.”
“You think I don’t know that? That’s what makes it so fucking hard to go on living in this shit society. There are no fucking answers, are there? The rich and powerful shit on the helpless and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it apart from resort to violence that gets you condemned and crucified. No wonder there’s terrorism and massacres. Some of those blokes the world condemns should be recognised as heroes.”
Fran was drying the lunch dishes. A cup clattered to the floor and she spun to face me. “Surely you don’t condone killing innocent people?”
“I feel sorry for innocent victims, but I suspect sometimes people who get shafted by the stinking corrupt system and the bastards who serve it just have to find a way to make their message heard. I’m here to testify that there aren’t too many options available that don’t hurt innocents. The real murderers are the mongrels who drive people to such desperation that they lose control.”
She stood there, open mouthed and bug–eyed, quivering, but she ought to know me well enough not to be shocked. To the outside world, I presented the image of a man who had it all together and was in total control. There were a few who knew I’d lost it occasionally under the influence of grog and taken my frustrations out on my wife. No–one would regard me as a violent man, nor one who condoned violence, but I found it impossible to imagine that Fran was unaware of the burning desires I fought constantly to suppress.
One of the benefits of the family reunion was that it was much easier to pretend I’d had a normal upbringing. Those who knew my story simply dismissed it as one of those sad and unfortunate things that happen and you have to get over. Everyone suffers hardships. You get past it. Most would have said confidently that I had gotten over it very well. No criminal record;10 years of army service with a clean conduct record; a respectable citizen earning an honest living, paying off a home and raising good kids.
Those who knew of him would declare it a pity that my father wasn’t strong enough to recover from his trials as successfully and blame him for the tragedy of my childhood. Few would ever condemn the system or those who served it.
“Jen and I, we’ve often talked about what we suffered as kids,” I said, rising to discard yet another empty and help my wife sweep up the broken china. “I guess it never occurred to us to think very much about what Dad must have endured, but he suffered so much more than I did.”
“He was the adult, Paul. You were the child. Kids think their parents should be in control of the world. Mums and Dads are fixers. We don’t see them as helpless or suffering, so we blame them for not preventing our hurt. It’s natural.”
“I never blamed Dad. Jen did, but not me. I don’t know why. I just always assumed everything was somehow Mum’s fault, although I never let the thought be known to either of them and I know now that neither of them was to blame. Their kids were their whole life, Fran. The only good thing to come out of a miserable existence,” I said sadly. “That’s all it was after that Simms bastard destroyed their world. They just existed.”
The back of her hand touched my cheek ever so lightly, silken fingers sliding gently towards my chin.
“So are you going to resign yourself to doing the same, or take your own counsel? Remember what you said to Jen?”
“The SIDS alarm, Fran,” I said, a current of hope suddenly surging through me. “It will save babies’ lives, and making it will save mine. This time, Paul Wilson is going to achieve his dream.”
~~~~