You Never Met My Father (2 page)

As we travelled south I thought about my son, already a father himself. He had grown up with another family, a loving family by all accounts. I had not known him until I was in my late forties.

A wave of regret swept over me as it always did when he entered my thoughts or dreams. I wondered what had prompted my mother to mention him.

I glanced at her as her head lolled with the rhythm of the train. Her days were nearly up. There were mysteries she would take with her to the grave. I had never really gotten to know her, except as a mother. I never knew what she thought of the rambling way I had lived my life, or what she thought of Claire, who was my son's mother, to whom I was married for a while, or even what she thought of Sonia. I never understood her loyalty to my father. I had an urge, a longing, to ask her, but she was sleeping, an old woman's moribund sleep, dreaming no doubt of earlier times. Her breath rasped and wheezed as dry as the desert wind outside.

BESIEGING POLICE DEFIED BY ARMED MAN DETECTIVES PARLEY

These were headlines from
The Argus
(Melbourne) on the 30th of November, 1951. The front page of newspapers across Australia bore similar news.

The gunman was Denny Sparkes, my father.

A man went berserk with a gun in a barricaded house…and held off all who tried to approach
…The occupants were driven out, into the arms of horrified neighbours. A volley of murderous curses followed them down the narrow street. For the provincial Tasmanian city of Launceston, in the fragile post-war years, such a forcible seizure undermined the hope of a peaceful future after the carnage in the Pacific and Europe. Startled police arrived.

All available Launceston detectives secreted themselves in adjoining houses to watch for Sparkes to make a move.

He threatened to shoot anyone who came near, including his two brothers who had been summoned to negotiate. One of them was too angry to be helpful. The other chan ged his name when interviewed by the press. In accordance with the social mores of the day, my hapless mother, the one person who might have calmed my father, was kept away. He stormed around the house raising and lowering blinds, smashing windows, upturning furniture. In a rage he fired through the front door, narrowly missing the renamed brother who, with a young turk detective, had crept onto the porch and appealed to him
to be sensible and come out
. But nothing was further from his mind. Then, no doubt in light of his unfortunate military record, the army appeared. Warrant Officers met with police to discuss the possibility of dislodging him with tear gas and smoke grenades. Children milled around. Th ese were innocent times.

About 50 small children stood in the street, 100 yards from the house until scattered by police about an hour and a half later.

One reckless boy ran onto the verandah of the house, probably on a dare. Innocent times, pre-television days, with no live footage to view from the safety and comfort of a lounge room. Families drove up in taxis and private cars to witness the unfolding drama.

Many of them left hurriedly when another shot was fired at 7.30pm…

It would be a long night, the start of a long conflict, one that would last a lifetime…with authorities, with society, with himself… No, I'm wrong to called it ‘the start'…that, surely, came much earlier.

As I was growing up my father rarely revealed details of his early life, those years before my birth, and even less about his family. It wasn't until I was a teenager that he began to open up a little. Prior to that the only answer he offered, when I badgered him, was that his grandfather had been a remittance man, a disgraced English aristocrat banished to the colonies, and his great-grandmother had been the famous Tasmanian, Truganini. In my younger years I was gullible enough to believe anything he told me.

I didn't badger him often, only when I was sure it was relatively safe to do so. In temperament he was unpredictable. It took a special moment, a lull in the storm, to dare a minor interrogation. In looks he rivalled the Hollywood beaux of the thirties and forties, with his impeccable wavy coiffure, luminous blue eyes and disarming smile, almost a poster boy like the local lad, Errol Flynn. But he had a minor physical flaw, which fascinated me as a child and led me to believe there was something not quite right about him: the absence of a left nipple. I was yet to learn it was the least of his oddities. He told me it had been shot off during the war—a remark I didn't doubt until he admitted years later that he had never seen active service.

According to one of his cousins at his funeral he had been a wild child who grew to be a suave teenager, a charming lad to all the adults he knew (except his own father who had never been charmed by anyone), respected by men who had witnessed his boxing prowess, admired by women for his good looks. But something momentous happened to him while he was in Japan with the Commonwealth Occupational Forces. He was repatriated early, developed a ferocious temper, suffered dramatic mood swings and was prone to violent outbursts. He became an insomniac. He once told me that on his return to Launceston he went without sleep for eight months. A young man, barely an adult, probably dressed in unkempt clothes, his eyes gleaming madly, and his hair wild with neglect. Each night he wandered the streets into the early hours, which included a lonely journey up an unlit path beside the Cataract Gorge, until he came to a swinging footbridge, where he conversed with an equally restless apparition.

Who was the apparition? Some other self he might have been had he not joined the army? Did he tell it what had happened to him in Japan?

Did he say he was posted to Nagasaki, where he was caught stealing blankets from a US Army depot with the intention of distributing them amongst orphans wandering the ruined streets? Did he add that American MPs with no respect for his charitable work beat him up or, rather, threw him down a flight of stairs, doing permanent damage to the unique matter inside his head?

I heard such a story from my mother or father when I was young. But the Commonwealth Forces were never in Nagasaki. They were in the western prefectures, which included Hiroshima and Kure.

Decades later I discovered a different version. I was surfing the net one day when, to my astonishment, I found a number of newspaper articles on my father in the National Library's digital archive that dealt with some of his misdemeanours from the late forties and early fifties. At one of his reported trials, his mental health was raised by the defence counsel, who stated he had been beaten over the head with a plank of wood by a Korean soldier in Japan. It was information given under oath but I had my doubts. I had never heard of Koreans being part of the Occupational Forces and a search for evidence of it in books and online revealed nothing.

When, long after his death, I got hold of his military and medical records, I was able to piece together a more plausible account.

Like his two brothers my father left school at the age of twelve. He began a five-year carpenter's apprenticeship for the purpose I believe of joining his father's construction team. But when he completed it in 1945, he defied his family's wishes and enlisted in the army. He cheated on an eye test, memorizing the chart to conceal the corneal opacity in his right eye, and passed an entrance medical examination. No check was undertaken on the mental fitness of the eighteen year-old.

His conduct in the first few months after his recruitment must have been exemplary for he was promoted to corporal. But then he went AWOL for fifteen days during some training in New South Wales, for which he was penalised a month's pay, fined £5 and demoted to private. A few months later he was incarcerated for 14 days and fined another £5 for ‘offering violence to his superior officer', somehow avoiding a dishonourable discharge.

When the Second World War ended he volunteered to serve in occupied Japan. Assigned to the 66th Battalion of the Australian Infantry Forces, he arrived at the military port of Kure, which was a smouldering ruin, on the 26th of April, 1946. The barracks where he was billeted were twenty kilometres out of town at a place called Kaitaichi on the road to Hiroshima. In the weeks that followed he went on patrol around the port and perhaps even into Hiroshima. No doubt he witnessed some terrible sights but he made no complaint and his superiors considered him diligent and reliable. He showed no signs of anxiety or shock. There was no warning of what was to follow.

On July 4th, American Independence Day, he went berserk in his barracks, attacking other infantrymen, smashing furniture, overturning bunks and lockers. It took ten men to subdue him. He was put in a straight jacket and removed to the 92 Independent General Hospital in Kure.

As his Field Medical Card reveals,
[he] suddenly became violent this evening about 20.00. Stated he was suffocating from the scent of a frangipani. Has not had a drink of any alcohol. Usually a quiet lad. He is a good worker. Th is is the first time he has shown any signs of unstable mind.

He was treated with morphine.

On admission he was quite rational though he stated the Japs had been trying to suffocate him by bringing flowers into his room, which used up all the air. He was in a state of fear and believed in the reality of his recent experiences. He said he had had suspicions of the Japs for the past three days but had only become certain of their intentions this evening.

He woke the next morning much calmer but still defended his account of the frangipani ordeal. By the following day, however, he began to feel he must have been imagining the whole thing and referred to it as a terrible nightmare.

His return to sanity didn't last long. Further violent psychotic episodes—more smashed furniture, more attacks on army personnel—followed. Then he disappeared for three days and was found in a public area with bruises all over his body at the bottom of eighty or ninety steps, without any recollection of what had occurred. Did he fall? Was he pushed? Did it cause brain damage? The incident is barely mentioned in his military record.

During his confinement the resident psychiatrists and medical staff discovered a history of mental instability in his family (already quietly preparing a Departmental defence against liability). A maternal grandfather and an uncle had suffered mental illness. And Denny had shown neurotic traits ever since a fall from a tram in childhood. He had suffered blackouts, dizzy turns, and amnesic attacks, where he would wander and have no recollection of what had happened for an hour or more. He told doctors that since his arrival in Japan he had been extremely anxious and depressed. The doctors concluded that he had experienced a psychotic episode. He was diagnosed schizophrenic.

Eventually he recovered sufficiently to be discharged but was still suffering from anxiety. His army doctor, who considered his psychiatric condition ‘constitutional', recommended he be reclassified as unfit for military duties and repatriated to Australia to avoid an inevitable relapse.

The definitive diagnosis was ‘psychopathic personality with emotional instability'. It was written across his military file and appeared on the majority of his Repatriation Department medical reports over the next few decades, as if it were immutable. But the degree of disability was deemed ‘negligible'.

Did he reveal what had happened to him in Japan to the apparition on the swing bridge?

Six months after his discharge, he was in the icy water of the South Esk River in Launceston, below the rapids where it reached the Tamar. He was clad in army issue fatigues, heavy boots, and a trench coat whose pockets were full of stones. There was a police launch nearby and a hefty hand grasping his collar. He wished the law would leave him alone. He was furious with its lightning response, furious he hadn't yet sunk beyond its reach. The anger only made him feel more impotent.

Denny had been discharged from the army in late October 1946, but within weeks was seeing a psychiatrist, who worked for the Repatriation Department in Launceston. He told the doctor he was unable to concentrate, his ears buzzed and at times there were clicking sounds in his head. Then there were his blackouts of five minutes duration, which occurred about every eight to fifteen days. He also said he suffered from insomnia due to an overactive mind.

His inability to concentrate meant he had been unable to work since his discharge, which increased his anxiety and depression. He had been taught the importance of work growing up, and wanted to return to the trade he learnt before he enlisted. His family had always valued hard work. His father was a plasterer, a mean, overbearing figure who expected his three sons to follow in his footsteps, into the family business, which was built upon canniness and toil.

The doctor reported that his patient felt he was controlled by some outside agency, often experiencing a sense of unreality, as if he were watching himself acting on a screen. The doctor noted ‘depersonalisation'
.
Denny fidgeted. As he sat, his legs moved constantly. His eyes darted around the room. He said he often felt as if something supernatural was happening. Hallucinatory voices commanded him to do violent things. These voices appeared to come from the back of his head. Sometimes they were vague and sometimes quite distinct. Startling the doctor, he slapped his head hard, as if to frighten the voices away.