You Never Met My Father (10 page)

After the school year finished, my sisters and I started preparing for Christmas. The manager produced a Christmas tree, taller than any I had ever seen. Pat handed us a box of decorations and even allowed me to climb the step ladder to attach the feature star, which represented, I had learnt, the star that led the Three Wise Men to the stable where Jesus was born.

My mother never went to church and never made us go to Sunday school, but she told us she believed in Jesus and had given us a Little Golden Book with the story about him.

Jesus seemed like a nice man and in the pictures he always glowed, so he was probably God's son, like he said, because I'd never seen anyone else glow like that. And when he was a baby he was cute. He had a ring above his head that was called a halo, which was meant to let everyone know how good he was. Nobody I knew had a halo, so I guessed he was better than everyone else.

Christmas was his birthday so we were supposed to be very happy. But it wasn't the Baby Jesus who made us happy so much as a nice old fellow with flowing white beard, who wore a red suit and was called Santa Claus, Santa for short. What his connection was to the Baby Jesus wasn't clear but I wasn't going to let that mystery spoil the occasion. It was like the Easter Bunny who came at the same time each year that Jesus died on the cross. The Easter Bunny seemed to come along just to cheer us up because death was a gloomy, spooky sort of thing, not the normal reason to have a holiday. But none of the stories I'd read about Jesus had the Easter Bunny in them. The other thing about Santa and the Easter Bunny was that you never got to see them when they dropped in; they just left their presents and were gone without even a ‘hello', except maybe a written one, scribbled in a handwriting that looked just like my mother's. It was to surprise you but you always knew they were coming.

Jean declared my query about rabbits laying eggs like chooks made no sense, and pretended to be privy to the Easter Bunny's secrets. Th ere was one more mystery visitor: the tooth fairy that came whenever a tooth fell out as long as you put it in a glass of water. It never said ‘hello' either but paid more visits than my father.

Early in the New Year the shearing started and Pat resumed her seasonal duties, preparing thermoses and lunches. The shearing sheds were on the other side of the homestead driveway, within easy walking distance. Angus Campbell was due to visit. I wondered if I would be chasing his golf balls down some of the steep hills.

At the height of the shearing, on a Saturday, Denny made another unannounced appearance, this time without gifts and in an irascible mood.

He arrived in the middle of the night and climbed through Jean's bedroom window. Even in the darkness she recognised him and didn't scream. Years later she told me about their brief exchange.

“Hello Dad.”

“Who are you?”

“Jean.”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

It had been a genuine query. Most likely his confusion was due to weeks of shock treatment, which I knew nothing about for many years.

I awoke to the sounds of roars and wailing.

Terrified I sat bolt upright.

I heard my frightened mother pleading.

A wild accusatory voice sounded like it was spitting out poison. I didn't understand all the words but they sounded bad. “You and that ugly fat bastard! Un-fucking-believable!”

I heard her indignant denials.

He roared again and something went crashing against the other side of my wall.

“Denny, don't, don't, please!”

I was convinced she was being murdered. There was a horrible gurgling sound followed by silence.

I fled under the bed and stayed there, expecting to be the next one murdered. I was shaking all night, out of fear as much as the cold from the lino floor. At some stage I wet myself but was too afraid to emerge to change my pyjamas.

I must have fallen asleep but awoke suddenly and shrieked when someone touched my leg.

“It's all right, darling, it's me,” my mother said softly. “What are you doing under there?”

“I thought I heard something in the night. I was scared.”

“It's all right now. Come out.”

She must have noticed I'd wet myself. “Take these off,” she said, helping me out of my bottoms. “Get dressed before your father comes back.”

I shuddered and cried out when I caught sight of her battered face.

“Don't worry about me. I'll be all right. Just have some breakfast and go and play outside. Just keep out of his way if you see him.”

I took some extra food for lunch into hiding, into a shed where hay was kept, feeling guilty, with my secret promise to protect her failing its first test. But to protect her from my father was a terrible duty. It seemed unnatural. And I was terrified of him. Through a crack in the shed wall I caught a glimpse of him, prowling like a hungry beast around the mansion. He seemed much bigger than I remembered, as if he were storing his rage in flesh and muscle. He looked like the criminal I had been told he was. He was far more fearsome than the bull that had stormed into the home paddock. It broke my heart that I should feel terrified of my father. I found a warm spot out of sight and willed myself to sleep.

Did he stay for long? My memory suggests he didn't but, looking through his medical files decades later, I encountered a letter from Campbell to the Repatriation Department that suggested Denny was his employee. Perhaps his employment extended back to
Kirkwall
, for Denny received letters there between May and August 1959.

Late one afternoon, still keeping out of my father's way, I heard Pat calling me in a desperate voice.

In trepidation I emerged and skulked over, brushing off bits of hay. Her face was still bad, from the initial beating or further attacks. The bruises were going yellow. But her swollen cheeks were dry. She dropped down to my level, took my hands and pressed them hard. Once again she was trembling. I could see the fear in her eyes.

“Your father's just done something very bad, darlin', and now he's taken off in the car.” Her split bottom lip quivered. “I've got to go looking for him. Will you come with me? I need some company. Something might've happened to him.”

What she expected me to do if something had happened to him was left unspoken.

The bad thing my father had done (although I didn't know this until I pieced together information that he and my mother revealed to me years later) was to break into Campbell's cellar and steal most of the French wine, which he took to the shearing sheds and distributed amongst the shearers. It must have cost them
Th
e Pines
contract, but, not insignificantly, it would have been an enormous fillip for their reputations within the shearing fraternity, which thrived on such stories, built legends around them. Sheep remained unshorn or half-shorn. One or two were inadvertently left in the sheep dip and drowned.

It was unfortunate, although not entirely unexpected, that the revelry occurred the same day Campbell arrived. He quickly figured, or more likely was told, what had happened, and in a fury confronted Denny, who by then was thoroughly intoxicated on the best wine money could buy. His face flushing with righteous indignation, Campbell ordered him off the property.

On the surface Denny's action appeared delinquent and gratuitous, the behaviour of a man totally out of control and driven by a mad suspicion of his wife's infidelity. His drunkenness was certainly out of character. Throughout his life I never once saw him drinking. He certainly never kept beer in the fridge or joined our Uncle Fred, one of Pat's brothers, in his binges while he lived with us when I was a teenager. Whatever prompted Denny's mischief, it took an ominous turn, unleashing his hatred of Campbell and everything he stood for. For a long time when I was older I was inclined to consider the looting of the French wines a calculated, rather than entirely reckless, act. It was done with some symbolism in mind, if not for the shearers' benefit, at least for his own satisfaction. He knew it was something Campbell would have understood—
them and us
—the class divide.

Foolishly he ignored the order to leave and invited Campbell to be his sparring partner instead. He refused to take no for an answer. He danced around and flailed his arms in a poor imitation of those steps he had learnt in the army for battalion boxing tournaments, prior to his tour of duty in Japan. But being drunk his fists missed their target. Campbell fled. Denny staggered after him. In a moment of inspired madness he changed course and commandeered the farm ute for the purpose of running over his adversary. He did some serious swerving and revving, which left deep ruts in the soft earth of the home paddock, without ever reaching Campbell, who for a portly man showed a remarkable turn of speed and agility, suffering no more than dented pride and muddied moleskins.

Denny sped recklessly off the property.

I had no idea whether the incident had just occurred or whether it had been hours before when Pat borrowed another farm vehicle and we went looking for him. Maybe she knew already what had happened to him. Maybe she feared the worst. Why else would she have imagined she could catch up to him?

We followed the winding dirt road down towards the highway in dreadful silence, my eyes searching the roadside scrub for any sign of an accident. Pat's knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. As we came around the last bend before the bridge over the river, I saw the ute on its roof in a gravelly clearing beside the road.

I have no recall of my mother's immediate reaction except for a pathetic sound, like a groan of doom. She stopped the car and stared at the wreck. The blood had drained from her face and for a moment I thought she was going to pass out. She closed her eyes and her head drooped forward until it rested on the steering wheel between her hands. I volunteered to go and see if I could find him, mindful of how much I owed her. Too afraid to look herself, she nodded gratefully.

I skulked over and peered into the crushed cabin.

It was empty.

Stunned and relieved, I made a half-hearted search of the scrub on the riverbank, without finding any sign of him.

When I returned to the car, I hardly recognised my long-suffering mother. She resembled a hideous clown. With her battered eyes squeezed shut and her torn mouth agape, I thought she was laughing.

It is an image of her that has stayed with me all these years, etched into the back of my mind by some malignant light.

But is this really what happened?

I found documents in his medical records that suggested otherwise.

After the incident, on the 9th of January, 1960, Denny was again admitted to the Repatriation General Hospital at Heidelberg in Melbourne ‘suffering from Psychopathic Personality & Emotional Instability', and given shock treatment. Contact was made with Mr Campbell as his employer. A form had to be filled out, but Campbell refused. On the phone he said that he intended coming to Melbourne on the 29th and would bring Pat to speak to someone in authority about Denny's condition. He also said that Denny should have been charged with ‘murder'
.
The word was underlined. Was this Campbell's disingenuous hyperbole or the notetaker mishearing ‘attempted murder'? Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, had been killed. If the Repatriation Department couldn't give Campbell further information or insight into Denny's condition, he felt disposed to take the matter up with the CIB. He wanted Denny certified but his request was declined.

Denny left the hospital against medical advice on the 22nd of February but didn't reappear at
Th
e Pines
. No one knew his whereabouts. But he returned to Heidelberg and was readmitted two days before Pat and Campbell's attendance at the hospital.

Campbell was interviewed by the Officer in Charge of the Treatment Section at the hospital. The officer seemed to think that Campbell was extremely interested in our family and anxious to help us in any way possible.
From what he told me he has obviously been most generous from the financial point of view to the whole family over a considerable period. He found the wife and three children about 15 months ago in a state of semi-starvation; gave the wife a job at £8/-/- a week plus full board and keep for herself and the children and they improved considerably.

These words incensed me when I first read them in the glass cubicle at the Veterans' Affairs office in Melbourne. I jumped up and stormed around, arousing the curiosity of the public servant who was in the adjacent area to keep an eye on me. How dare Campbell lie about us to ‘big note himself ' (as my mother would say)! We had never been half-starved. We had never gone without a meal in our lives. My mother would have forgone the clothes on her back to keep us fed. Had she known of his correspondence, she would have been mortified. And then she would have been outraged. I'm sure she would have left his employment immediately.

Campbell went on to tell the officer that, when Denny was released from jail in Brisbane, he arrived at the farm (
Kirkwall
or
Th
e Pines
?) in a new car, which had apparently been obtained through hire purchase. Campbell took him on and placed our family in a cottage at
Th
e Pines
, but it soon became clear to Campbell that Denny's betting and drinking problems (!) were quite severe. In early January some workers on the property reported to Campbell that Denny had just tried to run
his wife and children
over, but those who witnessed it had managed to prevent it. Apparently Denny made three unsuccessful attempts to kill us before he left the property.