You Never Met My Father (17 page)

But tomorrow was a Saturday, a race day, and my next lesson was forgotten. When I asked him about it, he was studying his form guide.

He dismissed me with an impatient gesture.

“Later,” he muttered.

It never happened and I wasn't game to ask again in case it made him angry.

Even though I could see he was making a genuine effort to be a part of the family, it was hard to relax around him because of his volatile moods. I never knew whether he was going to be cheerful or morose. I never knew how to respond. Either way I felt like I was a drag on him; a drag on his cheerfulness, which brought him down, or a burden when he was gloomy. More often than not I felt responsible for his state of mind. I felt that he considered me a burden, one of the causes of his woes. That's how I remember it, at least. But maybe I'm forgetting things…maybe more pleasant matters are less impressionable upon a young boy's mind, less memorable…or maybe I'm wilfully forgetting happier times…

We did do other things together.

Once he took me to the races.

I can't recall whether it was around this time, to a regional turf meeting near Portland—say, Warrnambool or Casterton—or much earlier, when we were still in Brisbane. But I remember him in an amenable mood, which I always found unsettling. I followed him around shyly, into the betting ring, over to the starting parade to view the majestic thoroughbreds, down onto the fence during the races to watch them thunder by. I think he wanted to impress me with the power of the horses and the excitement of the occasion so that I gained some appreciation for his obsession. He even asked me to choose a horse and placed a bet for me. Luckily, it ran last. I avoided out-performing him, just, which would have been disastrous. By the end of the day his mood had turned. Before the last race, we departed, and he never took me again, at least, not until I was almost twenty, and then it was to the harness races in Melbourne.

There was another occasion on a searing day. It must have been when we were still living at Percy Street, when I was about nine or ten. I remember he came to the beach with me. I already knew of his aquatic feats from my mother but he was keen to demonstrate them. There was an area between two timber piers that was popular with locals: the ocean pier, where cargo ships docked, and the fishermen's pier, where recreational fishermen moored their boats, which had a catwalk lower to the water. A number of pontoons, made from heavy timber and 44-gallon drums, were connected to the catwalk. They bobbed upon the sea fifty metres from shore. The sea baths on the other side of the ocean pier were all but abandoned due to neglect. In summer the area was crowded with swimmers. While adults usually attempted a dignified immersion, kids dived or jumped squealing and shouting from the pontoons or catwalk. For me, the noise was so pervasive and persistent it became synonymous with summer. A summer without joyful cacophony was hardly a summer at all.

Normally I stuck to the shallows, lacking the confidence to venture out of my depth. But on the day Denny came with me he insisted we go onto the pontoons.

“Come on, Butch,” he urged. “I'll show you a thing or two about swimming. You didn't know your old man could swim, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

He turned to look at me, surprised. He was on the first pontoon, which was bobbing up and down. I was still on the catwalk.

“Mum told us.”

A grin slowly spread across his sweaty face. “She did, did she?” He seemed inordinately pleased with the news. “She knows.” His head nodded slowly as he took in the aquatic scene.

“Come on,” he said and strode forward.

I lowered myself onto the pontoon.

I crept along and gingerly jumped from one to the next as they rocked about on the water, following Denny, who looked handsome and muscular, although his back was hairy and his legs were skinny like mine. I sat on the edge, my feet dangling in the deep water, as he dived in. I waited for him to resurface, anxious about being left alone. There were older boys running along the pontoons, leaping across the narrow gap between each, shouting and challenging one another in arm-to-arm combat, which ended when one or both fell into the sea, yelling. Their unruliness intimidated me. With little confidence in my swimming, I felt vulnerable and panicky. I was unable to move, to retreat to the catwalk, the pier, to terra firma. I scanned the water for Denny without success, my hands gripping the solid planks of the pontoon, abandoned in a new way. Eventually I saw him waving in the distance, beaming like a signal buoy.

Even if I'd had the nerve to release my grip I wouldn't have reciprocated. I suspected he was taunting me. I willed him to come back. I saw him submerge and some minutes later he resurfaced at my feet. He chortled as he levered himself onto the pontoon with his powerful arms, splashing water around, droplets forming on the hairs of his chest and bushy eyebrows.

“Did you see how far your old man can swim under water, eh?” He was beaming again. He looked around and then at me, drilling his wild eyes into my fear.

As he settled onto the planks next to me, some teenage boys raced past and shoved me into the sea. I looked up as I sank into the depths, alarmed that he hadn't plunged in to rescue me. I could just see the soles of his feet beneath the surface, signalling his indifference. I had no ladder to climb as my sister had in a Brisbane pool years before. Horror filled my lungs. I flayed my arms in panic and somehow managed to ascend.

When I broke the surface I screamed for help.

He stared at me incredulously.

“Swim! It's only a couple of yards, for Chrissakes!”

I pleaded for help. I was scared. It was too deep.

Suddenly he was in the water next to me. He grabbed me roughly and somehow tossed me onto the pontoon. I cracked my knee on its hard edge but suppressed a cry, petrified by his fury. He lifted himself out of the water again, with half the sea coming with him like a fluid cape. He didn't sit next to me again but stood, muttered a prediction about my future manhood, and walked away.

In the first year we lived at Daisy's place, Pat's attitude gradually improved. She managed to transform the place into a home, making cheerful curtains for the kitchen and putting cut flowers in vases. She was still taking Bex each day for headaches, but looked less worn out. She sang more as she worked around the house. With fewer concerns about Denny, she showed more interest in our lives, especially about what we did at school. She had always encouraged us to take our education seriously, seeing it as the only realistic way out of poverty, if not for her, at least for us, her children. And for us kids it seemed a sensible distraction. Schoolwork took our minds off our father.

Still, despite some semblance of normality in our lives—my father getting casual work now and then, my mother still working at Borthwicks, our schooling going okay—weekends were usually difficult.

On Saturdays Denny set himself up in the living room. Our lounge suite consisted of some steel-framed armchairs with varnished timber armrests and vinyl-covered foam cushions. He had claimed one as his own. Next to it he put a paper rack for his collection of turf guides from a bi-weekly scandal rag
Th
e Truth
, a daily tabloid
Th
e Sun
, and a weekly publication dedicated to the turf optimistically titled
Best Bets
.

The paper stand doubled as a small coffee table. It had a laminated top where he placed, in a set array, his mug of strong instant International Roast coffee, his
Albany Trims
—a doctor having advised him to take up smoking for his nerves and these being the cheapest smokes he could buy—a glass ashtray and a portable transistor radio. Saturday morning he listened to turf experts and marked the latest scratchings on his guide. He concentrated on the commentators' remarks as if they were clairvoyants. He gambled all afternoon, jogging a block to and from the TAB, where he placed his bets between races, radio in hand, form guide grasped under his armpit, his loose change jangling in a pocket. He eventually cut a tiny gate in the tennis court fence to shorten the trip, without the permission of the church, whose curator tried unsuccessfully several times to board it up to prevent him appearing in the middle of weekend tournaments. There was a bench against the fence where spectators sat. On occasion they found the fence behind opening up and my father squeezing past them. If he still had money left in the evening he tuned in to the trots.

Saturday was a time when the rest of us tip-toed round the house. If possible we avoided the lounge room.

“Stay out of his way,” Pat advised in a hushed voice. “Don't upset him. You know how easy it is to upset him.”

If we happened to make a noise he complained or cursed us, making out we were inconsiderate and disrespectful. If either my mother, trying to do some housework, or Jean with her uncompromising personality, interrupted his concentration on the delicate task of picking a winner his irritation could turn to rage.

If Denny was on a losing streak, which was the norm, even silence could irritate him and seem like a taunt. Gloom hovered over his hunched shoulders like a fiendish aura. It sucked in all our energy and left us exhausted by day's end.

Usually, then, most if not all his wages were gone and we were to blame. Either our noise or lack of it, our silence, was responsible for his bad luck.

“I feel so tired,” my mother would complain on a Saturday night. “I don't know why. I haven't done much.”

She would take another Bex.

I found refuge in the hedge around the tennis court. I discovered hiding places and resumed my superhero fantasies. The Phantom, by now, was well and truly Number One.
Th
e ghost who walks
. I felt like that. I felt like a crusader against all evil who bore the burden of possible martyrdom. I stepped into the Phantom's skin and longed for a horse called Hero. My dog Sailor would have to do as Devil, although she resisted my attempts to get her to accompany me into the lofty sections of the hedge. I sent away for imitation gold skull rings with different coloured luminous eyes and a rubber version that I could press into an ink pad to leave the Phantom's sign all around the neighbourhood, to strike fear into the hearts of all evil-doers. I bought a cut-out cardboard face, black-masked and purple-hooded, attached a length of hat elastic, and poked holes where its eyes would be. I wore it while secretly pursuing my nemesis, The Evil One, from the safety of the hedge as he took a short-cut across the tennis courts on his way to another foray into crime. I hovered over him as he passed through an archway in the hedge, planning the best way to ambush him so he could be brought to justice. I got plenty of chances. He was backwards and forwards all day, his face shining unnaturally with optimism in the morning and becoming grimmer as the day wore on. I imagined a fight to the death. Once, as it was getting dark, I dropped onto Jean and some of her girlfriends as they passed underneath, as a kind of dress rehearsal. It scared the life out of them, and for that Pat scolded me. I spent long hours poring over maps of Africa in my school atlas, devising a strategy to remove The Evil One from the tennis court to Bengali, the Phantom's homeland, which I assumed was near the Congo.

Sometimes I just lay in a kind of nest I had made myself and watched the sky, idly projecting meaning onto the random shapes of clouds. I loved the sour resin the hedge exuded, which stuck to my skin and clothes. Occasionally I would put my hand inside my shorts and rub away. The sensation took my mind off family matters.

Around the house I kept out of Denny's way. I avoided leaving the Phantom's mark inside, unless it was on a wall beneath a bed where he was unlikely to detect it. I knew how easy it was to infuriate him. His moods were unpredictable and frightening, whichever way they swung. Often they were so violent he would grab the nearest sharp object to wield like a samurai warrior. Kitchen knife. Screwdriver. Hammer. Axe. Even the biro if we happened to interrupt his perusal of a turf form guide.

Whenever that happened I went to jelly. I disappeared into my room or into the hedge, leaving the others to their fate and me to brood over my cowardice, which had a physical manifestation, an invisible barrier that was as cold and unyielding as a prison wall.

On rare occasions when he had a big win, when one of his hundred-to-one chances got home by a nostril, he reached a jubilant crescendo that threatened to burst into madness where anything could happen. Bear hugs. Shouts of hallelujah. Dancing in the laneway. Chinese take-away. His whole appearance was transformed. The glare went out of his eyes, replaced with an impish sparkle, like the look of an urchin who had just found a shilling dropped in the street. His smile, purloined it seemed from someone more accustomed to merriment, was enough to unnerve me. His false teeth gleamed. His shoulders drooped, as if he had been released from an obligation to stand to attention all day. He looked years younger. He wanted us to join in his celebration, the joy he felt. He almost begged us to love him for his achievement, his long-awaited success.

When he tried to dance with Pat, she fended him off. “Don't Denny. I'm busy. I've got to cook.”

“Come on, darl, my luck's turning! Can't you see? Put the spuds away. Tonight we'll get takeaways!”

It didn't matter which way the pendulum swung I ducked for cover. I couldn't stand these extremes. There was no in the middle. No normalcy. No neutral mood. No chance to relax with him. Whenever he was around I was uptight and anxious. I awaited the next argument. It was usually over money.

Pat had learnt to be thrifty. Leftovers never went mouldy in the fridge but became another meal. No slice of stale bread was wasted. It was turned into a pudding of sorts. Bed sheets that were worn out in the middle were cut in two and re-sown so the less-worn edges became the middle, and so extended their use. Socks were darned. Patches were put on the torn knees of my school trousers. Still, she had to struggle with the household budget: the weekly groceries, the bills, and, with us kids growing unstoppably, clothes and shoes. And at birthdays and Christmases, money was needed for presents.