You Never Met My Father (13 page)

“How old are you now?”

I had turned ten I told him.

“Jesus, I've missed you. I've missed you all,” he said in a whisper.

He produced gifts, school satchels he had made from leather, one for me and one for each of my sisters that varied in size according to our ages. They had miniature suitcase handles and clip locks, and were far more impressive than any school bag I had ever seen. I blushed with pride and couldn't wait to take it to school and announce my father had made it (I still have mine, my one memento of him). My sisters looked radiant too, especially Carol who had come out of her bedroom, bleary-eyed, when she heard the commotion. She finally felt she had something in common with her older siblings.

Denny grinned with pleasure at our response.

Since he looked almost humble I summoned the courage to ask if he was going to stay. My sisters seemed keen to hear his answer too. A shadow crossed his smile. He promised he would and ordered us off to bed so he could talk to our mother.

When I got up in the morning I raced into the kitchen to talk to him, to tell him how I liked school and what I had learnt and about the green poo I had seen, but he wasn't there—nor was he anywhere else in the house. We went off to school, where I had the sense to refrain from making any public announcement about my father's appearance lest his stay prove temporary and require an embarrassing explanation at any school-ground inquisition. I deflected questions about my new satchel with a shrug and an allusion to it being a Christmas present. When Pat arrived home from work that evening my caution was vindicated. She told us that Denny had gone back to Melbourne.

“Why didn't he tell us that?” I whined, tossing aside the satchel.

“He didn't want to disappoint you.”

“Well he has.”

“He made you that satchel, which means he cares for you, love.”

Another year passed before we saw him again.

This was early in February 1962.

Lately I have learnt from his files that after my sisters and I had gone to bed Pat had told Denny some Hamilton detectives had recently paid her a visit with a warrant for his arrest for passing false cheques. He stayed the night but woke up with his hands around her throat. Horrified by his menacing behaviour and no doubt wanting to avoid the police, he headed for Melbourne before dawn, intending to return to the hospital.

He arrived back in the early afternoon in Melbourne
, wrote a social worker who interviewed him at the hospital,
and somehow or other (details again clouded with gestures) he managed to find himself at Caulfield races and despite all his good resolutions to give up betting altogether, got the idea that he could retrieve all his debts there, go home and pay everybody and all would be well. He had £30 when he arrived and finished up losing the lot.

He then returned to the hospital.

Denny spent at least six months of 1962 in the hospital at Heidelberg. There's a record of him walking around his ward at 2am, being abusive, and soon after disappearing altogether. Police found him in the neighbouring suburb of Northcote in his pyjamas and returned him to the hospital. Another time he woke around two or three in the morning and felt ‘that he was outside himself '. He stated that he heard compulsive voices talking him into acts of violence, which he tried to fight off.

There are a few fragmentary hints to his psychosis in the notes of his medical officer during this stay. Denny revealed his father was an alcoholic and ‘lord of the manor'
.
His sister later told me their father was violent. Did fear of a brutal father contribute to his mental instability? The notes mention his fall from the back of a tram as a child. Did he receive head injuries? Brain damage? Was this the origin of his blackouts? Also he reveals that, while he was a child, he had endured several homosexual ‘approaches
'
. Were these serious? Was the perpetrator an adult? Was he assaulted? Was he molested? Was he raped? Were the incidents traumatic enough to trigger his mental illness?

This was the year my elder sister started high school. While he was in hospital, Denny went to a resident social worker and requested funds for his daughter's books and uniform. He was difficult and aggressive with the social worker, declaring that he didn't want charity. He got angry when it was suggested he approach the Education Department, instead of the Repatriation Department, and stormed out of the office. He later returned to apologise for his behaviour. The Education Department was contacted, forms filled in, and some financial assistance rendered. From that point on, during his stay at the hospital he made several visits to the social worker, asking for payment for his ‘medical sustenance', sometimes bringing with him other patients who were having financial problems, eager to assist them; eager for their gratitude. He was reluctant to talk to the social worker about his home life. If he had contact with his family in Portland it was done through his brother-in-law. The social worker noted that Pat did not correspond with him at all. After he had been in hospital for some weeks and the question of his discharge came up, he wrote to Pat again but received no reply.

He decided to tell the social worker about his life.

The story was very disjointed, he told it with half sentences, dismissing the rest of the sentence with a wave of his hand, a shrug of his shoulders or would put his hand to his head and say he couldn't remember all the details…He then seemed to come to a blank in the story, he either wouldn't or couldn't remember how he ended up in hospital. He thought he might have beaten his wife up before he left and that was why she had not been in touch with him, but he seemed to think she had some justification for not wanting him back.

Eventually it was agreed that Pat should come to Melbourne at the Department's expense to see both his doctor and the social worker.

The week Pat was due to visit Denny became very agitated. According to the social worker's notes he rang her to see if all was well and to confirm her intention to keep the appointment. (In all my years living at home we never once had the phone connected, but maybe it was a pre-arranged call to her brother's house.) The nurse believed he was told his children were all sick with hepatitis. (In our family only I have suffered hepatitis, and it wasn't at this stage in my life.) Denny ‘promptly went AWL'. He returned the day Pat was due at the hospital. She wasn't with him. Nor did she arrive later. The social worker completed her report with the following:

No contact has been made with the wife. It is understood that she feels she just could not go through the whole business of gaol sentences, etc. again. The man appears to realise this is his last chance and just how he will use it remains to be seen.

The social worker contacted his doctor in Portland who confirmed that things were bad between Denny and Pat. The doctor suggested the matter should be left to run its own course.

Th e social worker noted that Denny seemed very fond of his family.

He was discharged soon after, armed with a letter stating he was receiving treatment and that the staff genuinely believed he wanted a chance to ‘make good'.

But it seems that at some time the law caught up with him too. He later revealed to one of his medical officers that on more than one occasion he had spent time in the Portland lock-up for fraud.

While I was living at Percy Street I developed a death phobia. A cat that lived on the property had a large litter of kittens and one day the kids that lived in the bungalow drowned them all. I saw six tiny, sodden corpses floating in the laundry copper. The boy who taught me how to climb onto roofs and showed me his green poo was holding the seventh underwater with a triumphant smile, teaching me another thing: how easy it is for a delicate thing like life to be extinguished. I recoiled and raced inside to the sound of his laughter. In that instant I understood how fragile life was. Every night, after I went to bed and the light was turned off, I was transfixed by terror of a similar fate. Lying rigidly on my bed I endured panic attacks. I didn't want to die before I grew up and grew old. In fact I didn't want to die at all. Each night between gasps I chanted into a pillow that was damp with my tears, “I don't want to die, I don't want to die”
,
until I fell asleep. I was spared nightmares but each morning I woke exhausted from the dead weight of dreamlessness.

Ashamed I told nobody.

I was saved by Paul Walters, the vicar's son. The Reverend Walters was the new minister at St Stephen's Church of England, which was less than a block from our place. Although I can't remember how I met Paul, we became inseparable friends and the vicarage was soon my second home—perhaps my first home. Until I met him I had never had a close friend. He was my first because he never asked about my father or his whereabouts, which spared me the humiliation of lying or admitting I didn't know. My mother had sworn me to secrecy about his long stays in hospital—in what I had figured must have been a mental hospital.

Paul was a solid, good-looking, laconic lad with a thick crop of hair and a nonchalant smile. Being a year older than me, he could be slightly condescending. He was very intelligent and knowledgeable. Despite his father's vocation he wasn't particularly religious, although he participated in all the rituals his father requested. He donned a blue cassock to sing in the choir when needed, a red cassock when he served as an altar boy. But he never gave the impression he was committed one hundred percent.

Soon I was involved in the church services as well, only with a great deal more zeal than Paul. When it dawned on me what heaven promised I became the most pious lad in all of Christendom. I clung to my new-found faith like a lifebuoy. My debilitating panic attacks soon ended. Over the next few years I learnt the Catechism, sang in the choir, served at the altar and seriously wondered whether God had me earmarked for the Anglican ministry. If I had doubts I put them down to my newness to religion. I expected them to disappear as I opened my heart further. Here was something that gave meaning to all the chaos I saw in the world, the senselessness of life, its cruelties. It was comforting, too, to have a father in heaven when there was little sign of one on the earth.

St Stephen's was a bluestone church, built in the 1850s. Its design was grandiose but when Portland was passed over as the capital of a new colony on the southern coast of the mainland, episcopal funds dried up and it was never completed. Instead of stately bluestone, its back wall was made of corrugated iron. Resting in the grounds was a huge bell donated by Edward Henty, the first squatter in the district. It still needed consecration and a belfry. The interior of the church, if you faced the altar, was a sumptuous homage to Almighty God. There were polished timber pews, red carpet down the aisle and splendid lancet-arch windows with stained-glass images of the Apostles. The carved altar had tall candlesticks and, above the communion rail, a pendant oil lamp hanging on a long chain from the lofty heights. There were choir stalls outside the chancel, a huge pipe organ hidden next to it, a pulpit to one side and a brass-eagle bible stand in the southern wing, as well as a font for baptisms. It was easy to feel meek and therefore blessed in such a temple.

The vicarage was more prosaic: a modern, double-storey, brick house behind the church, not as grand as Angus Campbell's dwellings but larger than most I had been in. It needed to be. The Walters had four children.

They were a happy family. The Reverend and Mrs Walters were rather formal but they doted on their children. They took them to beaches and sports events. They helped them make ice cream and ginger beer. They took them on holidays every year. They bankrolled their hobbies.

Paul had several. Stamps were one. He had accrued an impressive collection from all over the world. He kept them under cellophane in albums, arranged in alphabetical order according to nationality. It was through stamps I discovered countries had different names to the ones I knew and currencies I had never heard of. He encouraged me to start a collection too. Then he turned to another hobby—model aeroplanes.

I waited awhile, wondering how much time should elapse before I could follow his lead without seeming too much under his spell. I watched him assemble Meschermidts, Stukers, Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers from plastic kits he bought in a dingy toyshop on Julia Street. He had an eye for detail and a steady hand. He never had parts left over or poorly aligned sections. Wings were stuck in the right places, flaps moved up and down, propellers turned. His models matched perfectly the illustrations on the boxes.

When I begged my mother to buy me one she found the money somewhere. And she also gave me a sixpence a week to buy
Boys Own
magazines, like the ones Paul collected, full of brave adventurous lads.

When I first tried to assemble a model aeroplane, a Spitfire, I made a mess with the glue. I watched in dismay as it oozed from the gaps when I pressed sections against each other. It stuck my fingers together and its fumes left me dizzy. The finished product inevitably was second-rate. Unlike Paul's, which looked ready to fly, mine could have had been something shot from the sky.

He used to grimace at my collection.

Within a year he progressed to a balsawood model that had a tiny petrol motor. I often accompanied him to a sports ground where he flew it. Standing in the middle of the oval he primed the motor with fuel from a miniature petrol can, found a smooth area for take-off and spun the propeller to fire up the motor. It sounded like a giant demented mosquito but flew spectacularly. Paul always maintained control with hand-held wires from the model. I was a mere spectator. I didn't mind. He was my first real friend and I admired him. I adored him.

In the grounds of the vicarage we built an underground cubby, which was too claustrophobic for me to use, and another cubby in the gabled section of the garage roof, from which we ran a can-and-string telephone line to one of the upstairs rooms of the vicarage to relay urgent messages about enemy positions in our military saga fantasy.