You Never Met My Father (21 page)

Convinced I could do nothing to stop him drowning himself, I started yelling for help. There were houses above the lagoon with magnificent views. Someone appeared on a balcony and saw us. He hastened inside.

I cried out again, adding, “He's going to kill himself, I swear!”

I gaped back at Denny, my heart pounding, my heart torn by his suicidal intent. He wanted nothing to do with us, his family. We were not enough to make living worthwhile. It never crossed my mind that he was trying to unburden his family.

Soon a man came hurrying down the road. I recognised him. He had been my music teacher in primary school. He must have been home for lunch.

When he reached the embankment, he looked beyond me and shook his head, in disgust or disbelief—I couldn't tell.

As I stood in the fetid water up to the top of my shins, with the soft bed of the lagoon yielding under my feet, he urged me to calm down. He had rung the police. They would arrive at any moment. I returned to shore too stunned to respond. He paid me the courtesy of pretending not to recognise me or notice my tears, for which I was grateful, forgiving him for excluding me from the school choir years earlier because I had sung a tad off key.

Shortly I heard the police sirens. Denny was more than fifty yards into the swamp. The water was up to his chest. I had no idea how deep it was further out. But already, if his legs gave way, he would sink beneath the slimy surface. The police had brought wading gear, rubber suits that came up to their armpits. They looked at each other and shook their heads, as if sometimes they wondered why they had bothered to join the Force. One of them told me there was nothing more I could do and ordered me to leave.

I obeyed. On my walk home I had an unpleasant epiphany. Anything can happen. Humiliating things. Grotesque things. Brutal things. And I was powerless to stop them. I thought of the future and saw nothing but bleakness.

Fortunately the lunch hour had ended. There were no longer any students in the street to observe the filthy state I was in.

Pat met me at the front gate as I came up the lane. She was dismayed by the sight of my sodden clothes and my tearful face. She led me inside as I recounted what had happened.

“You're a brave boy, darlin',” she murmured, grateful for my efforts.

She cried for a moment and hugged me to her.

“But go and have a quick wash, and get changed. There's still some hot water on the stove. I'll fix you a sandwich. Then go back to school.”

It was a wish for everything to return to normal, whatever she thought that was. I left her on the verandah, dressed in an old floral dress, her face drawn and wan, her glasses slightly awry, wringing her hands.

My heart went out to her. I waved to give her some comfort. And after a moment she waved back.

“Don't say anything to your sisters,” she called, her voice breaking. “It'll only upset them.”

When I got to school I listened to the buzz of some of my classmates as they related a story about the drunk they had seen in the street. What amazed them the most was seeing someone that intoxicated so early in the day. They were quite unaware that they were talking about my father. When one of them mentioned that he thought he had seen me following, I shrugged and pouted dubiously.

The police must have managed to drag my father out of the swamp.

“They've taken him to a hospital in Ballarat,” my mother informed me, when I got home after school. “I'm going to try and get up there tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, darlin', you've done plenty for him already. You saved his life. He'll be upset anyway. And you don't want to upset him more. He wouldn't want you neglecting your schoolwork. He'd already be feeling bad about you doing that today on account of him.”

“I thought you might need some company.”

She hugged me to her, pressed me to her chest and held me tight for a moment. “I'll be right,” she whispered unconvincingly.

The details of this suicide attempt, found in his medical records, corroborate my recollection of the incident.

After I had gone home the police had waded to Denny and held his head above the water. He had struggled and at some stage, perhaps when they were back on land, had assaulted the police with a piece of wood. There must have been a violent struggle. He was restrained with handcuffs and taken in the back of a police van to the Ballarat Mental Hospital. As the van was opened, hospital staff saw him lying down banging his hands on the van floor, trying to smash the handcuffs. His clothes were wet. He struggled and fought police removing him from the van, and with staff as they tried to take him inside.

Once he was in the ward, he was still aggressive, telling staff he would not settle down until he was allowed to go home to his wife and family. But the following day he was subdued. He claimed he had no memory of the suicide attempt. He didn't feel depressed and blamed the incident on his medication. He told the doctor who interviewed him that he had stayed up waiting for his eldest daughter to come home. At 9pm he had taken three sleeping tablets and one more at 10pm when she arrived home. After that he couldn't remember a thing. In the provisional diagnosis notes the doctor states Denny is ‘charming and plausible'. Denny said that he had been getting mixed messages from doctors about whether or not he should be taking sleeping tablets.

The doctor also commented,
[He] makes out that this brief experience in Ward 25 has altered his perspective—he's never seen severely mentally ill patients before. [He] feels that he has been wasting pity on himself.

Pat was interviewed by a doctor at the hospital three days after his admission. She called her husband's psychotic episodes ‘turns' and believed they were brought on by worry. She said he became confused and usually ‘sleeps it off'. She refused to accept that he took overdoses on these occasions. It was her view that he was someone who couldn't handle too much worry. On reflection she felt that she should take more of the family troubles on her own shoulders.

There was no mention of what these troubles were, no mention of his gambling, which was at the root of them all. When all our money was wasted and there was none left to pay bills and rent, panic set in. He had no way of asking for help with his addiction. He was too proud for that. He would have denied it was a problem. Besides, there was none of the anti-gambling organisations or Help Lines that exist today. So his response was to act like a wild beast driven into a corner. My mother's desire to shoulder more of the burden, under the circumstances, was a noble gesture but no solution at all.

The doctor noted:
She is obviously very fond of her husband
.

He was released a week after his admission.

Did I ever wonder why my father was like this? His suicide attempts. His compulsive gambling. His sudden eruptions of violence. His black moods. Did I ever try to understand what effect bad luck had had on him? These questions never entered my head. Or if they did I have no memory of them. I think my mind would have shut down if I'd probed too deeply. I would never have understood his psychological state. In fact, because most of what he did left me saddened, chronically anxious, and at times terrified, the only question that plagued me was: what would he do next to make our lives more difficult?

Denny continued his hostilities with the Repatriation Department over the next few years as he argued over his pension. And it was becoming political. He once revealed he had voted for Malcolm Fraser, against his political proclivities, because of the assistance the local federal Member of Parliament had offered him with some issue. On September 22nd, 1965, my mother wrote Mr Fraser a letter regarding a reduction in Denny's pension. When I first read it, the complexity of its language made me doubt it came from her pen, or my father's for that matter, but there was an accompanying letter from the local Anglican minister (in this story, Mr Walters). So perhaps he helped my mother with hers. Still, I have little doubt that she was prompted to do so by my father. It is reminiscent of the letter his mother wrote on his behalf in 1947.

Several pages long, it details all the injustices my mother thought Denny endured at the hands of the Repatriation Department in its refusal to consider independent medical reports on his condition which supported his application for a TPI pension, alluding to a personal vendetta from within the Department, which had resulted in a considerable reduction to his TTI pension.

What we both [Denny and Pat] would like to know is if one is examined by outside Specialists who give their opinions as to a person's capabilities and condition, then a Repatriation Doctor who hasn't seen the person involved for quite a considerable time can reduce his pension as he thinks fit. I know that Denny has clashed with Dr. Myles who has threatened to have him sent to Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital when he was hospitalised at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that Denny is being victimised…

I will admit he was annoying people, but under the circumstances I think he was justified to do so…

I've been working as much as I can to help out but Dr. Beavis told me that I had to have a rest as I was completely run down and couldn't carry on. When we were assured of a regular weekly income everything was much better. I know exactly what to budget for and we could manage, but as things are now if things don't improve I don't honestly know how things will work out…

It's curious that this letter to a local Member of Parliament (not yet Minister for the Army) should find its way into my father's medical records at the Repatriation Department, but I am grateful that it did because it gives me an insight into my parents' lives at the time. If my mother signed the letter, I am certain its contents would have been an honest account, despite receiving help with its composition. There is a note of desperation in her message. It had been difficult enough to get by, as it was, without Denny's meagre pension being cut further. If it were true that the Department was ignoring the medical opinion of independent specialists about Denny's ability to work, Pat and Denny had a reasonable case for suspecting discrimination. Over the years there had been plenty of mutterings within the Department that Denny was an unworthy recipient of a war pension of any shape or size.

A month after my mother's letter to Mr Fraser, the Assistant Chief Director (Medical Services) (Psychiatry) wrote in a minute paper that Denny was
one of those cases in which it is difficult to determine “how bad he is or how mad he is.”…Since the termination of his [paltry] military service, the member has been quite unproductive (except for producing children), but has been a social problem. His motivation towards work and being self-supporting is negligible, and all efforts to alter this have been unavailing.

I am disturbed that this member should be T.T.I., as this will inevitably lead to T. & P.I., which is the member's desire…

I fully agree with Dr. Stevenson's report…but it would seem that the Repatriation Department is now “stuck” with the member.