‘When I write the truth I am faced with verbal bullets from my critics and real ones from my enemies.’
27 AUGUST, 1999. At about 9am Charles Vincent Read was born at the Royal Hobart hospital. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was a caesarean birth. I’ve seen some worse sights, but I just can’t remember when. I held the little baby in my arms and then for the first time in my life, I truly knew what love meant.
I left the hospital that night and had to tell someone of the news so I drove to see my mates Shane Farmer and Mario Diienno, pronounced piano with a D in front of it. They are my mates so it was an obvious place to go although Mario wondered out loud whether a strip club was the right place for a new father to be. It was perfect because what was being flashed about was what got me in this trouble in the first place, ha, ha.
Mary-Ann had run around doing the shopping and other chores before the birth. She comes from tough stock but sometimes I think her family takes this stiff upper lip thing too far. I knew a bloke with a stiff upper lip once. Then I ripped it off. I bet you it stung, Sitting there with Mario, a Royal Commission waiting to happen, I thought, isn’t it strange, whenever anything happens in my life, good or bad, I end up with an Italian next to me. Thanks mate.
*
A FEW DAYS LATER: Baby Charlie is now home. When parking the car in front of the Royal Hobart Hospital to pick up wife and child I took out the headlight of a posh BMW.
I jumped out all apologetic to speak to the driver who was there to see his wife and baby. He told me he had read all my books and he didn’t seem to take the damage too seriously. We shook hands and in my confused state I have forgotten his name. But thanks mate, we have a lot in common, new kids and the need for panel beaters.
This driving business can be quite traumatic. I have already been forced to take out the rear side window with a hammer when I locked the keys inside the car. I put the poor Ford Falcon through a barbed wire fence on my own property when I was tired and emotional as a newt.
I have been told that some of the locals want to go roo and wallaby shooting on Read’s Run. A quick phone call to my legal advisers indicated they can’t do it without my permission and I am not keen on letting them in. If they jump the fence we will enter the murky world of trespass and litigation. I am polite, but I am still a rattlesnake.
I rang Amos to tell him his phone was off, he sounded like he was off as well. I know the federal authorities are showing a great interest in him — he has been described as a ‘Person of Interest’.
I suspect this roo shooting business is just a way of getting the hillbillies back on to my timber lease. If these wombats want a range war then they will need a missing persons register just for Richmond Tasmania.
I may not be the toe-cutter I once was but I could out think this lot on my worst days. I am giving little Charlie his bottle and he drinks nearly as well as his old man.
I am sitting in the kitchen, it is 12.30am and the wood heater is burning away merrily. My wife has come into scold me for sipping on a Mercury Light Alcoholic Cider which is only 2.8 percent alcohol. For goodness sake, I am more than 2.8 percent myself so what’s the problem, it would actually be diluting my alcohol content by drinking this piss. And apples are a local product so I am helping create jobs in Tassie, so there.
Sure I love the occasional drink but so did Winston Churchill and thousands of others who left their mark.
So I have my shortcomings yet, like you, when we are gone they will be remembered for these comic little ventures.
There was a prison officer in Risdon who always said my marriage would last and here I am with my son smiling and filling his nappy as though it is the height of good humour.
Every time that screw shut my cell door he would smile as though to say I am out and you are in. I would just smile back for chess is a long game and a pawn can laugh at a king for as long as he likes but he can never win the game.
He was a pawn and I was a king and time alone can win wars. His wife has left him now and he sits alone in his self made prison. I should feel sad for him. I don’t.
As far as the roo shooters are concerned, perhaps I should bring Dave over for a working holiday. Then it wouldn’t be the roos being shot, just the local wombats. As my dad used to say, half the bastards need a bullet in the head and the other half need two.
*
I WRITE and tell the truth but to avoid the hangman’s rope so to speak I will alter or twist little side issues to protect myself, and others from the curiosity of the law. If I talk of a body, I will not necessarily inform the reader of the exact location otherwise pesky coroners and homicide detectives looking to go to the next rung on the police ladder will be popping around for a chat. When I write the truth I am faced with verbal bullets from my critics and real ones from my enemies. Words are like magic star dust to be thrown into the eyes men to confuse and inform at the same time.
The pen is mightier than the sword but in fairness to the sword great things have been done by men and swords. But without the pen the actions of the sword would not be remembered beyond one generation.
Few men have made their marks with pen and sword and I have stumbled into that exclusive class and now I am a father too.
I always swore that as a feared criminal I would never have a wife and children for I knew they would always be the weak link.
I was right, of course. No strength in swordsmanship, however just can stand secure against a mad man’s thrust. Mad men have missions and they don’t have homes.
The birth of my son was the final confirmation that I am finished with crime. A man can throw his own life into the fire but not that of his family. I know the truth as I exploited criminals who had to worry about their families. A criminal family man was like butter doing battle with a hot knife.
I wonder what little Charlie will think when he is old enough to read and sees what his father was before he was born. I just hope he doesn’t see me as such a fool and I hope he will see that his very life helped change his father for the better.
I don’t regret anything. Every drop of blood, every tear, every day of solitude in jail brought me to this place and to my son. It was all worthwhile.