You Never Met My Father (4 page)

Denny went back to Flinders Island but within two months, on the 11th of May, 1953, he was admitted to the Launceston General Hospital in a psychotic state. Pat was interviewed by staff at the hospital. She informed them that his rages had become worse. The doctor noted that he was a likeable young man who was apt to sulk and get angry whenever he was crossed. During a physical examination Denny grabbed the doctor's hand, which was about to probe his neck, objecting to anyone touching his throat. While he was in hospital he received two electroshock treatments, the first of many he would endure over the years. He discharged himself after ten days, against his doctor's advice.

He rejoined us. We stayed in Launceston. But Denny soon considered shifting away from Tasmania altogether. He told a social worker a decade later that, after the siege, he was blamed for everything that went wrong in Launceston. Police arrested and questioned him thirteen times in eleven months. He claimed that every time he got a job the police informed his employer of his criminal record, and ‘that would be that'.

It appears we moved to Portland, on the west coast of Victoria where one of Pat's brothers and her sister lived, but he didn't stay with us for long. Towards the end of the year he was at his parents' address in Launceston, penning another letter to the Commissioner of Repatriation, in which he complained of financial hardship, his failed endeavours to shift interstate to start a new life, and the threats his wife had made to leave him. She was still in Portland, where he had the opportunity of obtaining a furnished flat, if only the Repatriation would grant him a small loan. He had been out of work for most of the year, but there was a part-time job waiting for him in Portland. He thought, with part-time rather than full-time employment, he would be able to manage his mental condition more successfully. His letter pleaded for the Department to consider his children. If the Repatriation couldn't see fit to grant him the loan, then an increase in his pension would suffice. He reminded the Commissioner that it was only after his suicide attempt that his pension was granted, and that, while in jail, nobody from the Department had ‘come near me not even to see if my feet were clean'. Then there was the electric shock treatment to which Department doctors had subjected him. They surely knew how a patient's brain could easily be fried. He insisted he was ‘no bludger', but a victim. Society had conspired against him, depriving him of any chance of decent employment. The letter ended in typical reckless fashion:
I'll say this though that if something cannot be done to help me out one way or the other & my wife leaves me I'll put on a performance that will make the Lee base & a few others look like gander parties. All I want is a chance to get away somewhere & start afresh & I think that with a little understanding on the Repat's side this could be arranged.

I was curious about the reference to Lee base, which insinuated some kind of menace or disaster. The only reference to it that I could find in archived newspaper articles was of an accident that happened in 1937 at an airforce base at Lee-on-Solent, near Portsmouth, south of London, where a pilot crashed his plane into his own house, occupied by his wife and child. The house was destroyed but the occupants and the pilot survived with a few scratches. Whether it was a murder-suicide attempt went unstated. Was my father implying he would kill his family? Or worse?

Underlined by someone at the Repatriation Department, maybe the Commissioner himself, was a sentence pleading for a loan or a pension increase, a request that fell on deaf ears.

Soon after, Denny was exiled from the family home. His father came home one day to find all the furniture missing, sold apparently to fund a bet on a certainty that never eventuated.

He went back to Portland, took possession of a block of land somehow, maybe with the financial assistance of my mother's brother, and started to build a house. He enlisted Pat as his assistant, until the frame of a wall toppled down on her and cracked several of her ribs. He called her careless and clumsy, but it didn't stop him asking her for help with the guttering a few days later. When in agony and still hard of breathing she refused, he finished the house without her assistance. But it rankled with him. It was one of their few attempts to do something together and it ended in acrimony.

The house still stands: a square fibro-cement, flat-roofed bungalow, still painted vivid blue, almost the same colour as his eyes. It lacks aesthetic merit, is entirely functional and frugal. I make a point of passing it occasionally when I visit Portland, as a reminder of the sedentary life I might have led, a reminder of how life presents a myriad of trajectories.

My sister, Jean, insists we stayed there for a while. She also tells me that, while we lived there, Denny had possession of a black stretch limousine, a Plymouth, probably from the thirties, one of only four in Australia, with running boards and room in the back for two facing seats, not to mention a minibar, which was wasted on my teetotal parents. He drove it to Geelong to see the Queen on her first visit to Australia. Neither of my parents was ever a monarchist to my knowledge, although cultural ties to England were much stronger in the fifties. I never once heard them praise any member of the royal family. To the contrary, a few colourful words were used to describe their station in life whenever a member of the royal family featured in the news. Nevertheless, Denny took us all along, as well as Uncle Mick and his wife, Gerty, ‘to have a gander', arriving half an hour before the Queen was due. As he drove through the streets, many of the onlookers who lined the streets, mistaking our imperial sedan for the royal vehicle, began to wave and cheer. Pat, with her hair cut shorter and permed, had an uncanny resemblance to the young Queen, and Aunt Gerty the frumpish Queen's mother. Surprised by their ebullient reception, they responded with a royal wave.

Sometime after this episode of mistaken identity, we must have returned to Launceston. My mother, my sister and I, but no father, lived at my grandmother's place, a ramshackle dwelling at the end of a cobbled lane, on a hill above the centre of the town, where today the ABC TV studios stand. Through the dimness of my fledgling memory, I see its kitchen. There's a pungency of broth, warmth from a blackened wood stove, feeble light through a grimy, lofty window, and a wrinkly woman with startling white hair, who is apparently my father's mother, sitting on a creaking chair. Her presence intimidates me but not my sister, who occasionally sits on her lap. And there's another room where the walls have the same boards as the floor, only painted yellow or brown, and the paint is flaking off. There is a cast-iron bath on paws, filled to capacity with a fat uncle, steamy water lapping at the rim, an astonishing sight to behold, which I want my mother to share and am amazed, confused and disheartened by her stubborn refusal. My father is an abstraction that my mother sometimes talks about but only in hushed terms to my grandmother. To me he remains a mystery, like the ‘Good Lord' that the old woman always talks about.

Where was my father? Why wasn't he with us?

Did I ask anyone?

I was too young to know I was even supposed to have a father. I couldn't really comprehend what such a person was. Would he be different from an uncle, who gave me cuddles and said I was a handsome little fellow (a lie, surely, but said with good intentions)? My older sister, who at five was almost twice my age and wise beyond her years, might have known. But, if I asked, her answer made no lingering impression. Or, if it did, she said he was a madman and I have wilfully forgotten it.

I was scared to ask my mother in case it upset her; an innate filial protectiveness, kicking in prematurely, or did I know that something was amiss between my parents? She would have answered with a lie, which would have upset her, since she was an honest person who took pride in her integrity.

The depth of my father's mental illness and his gambling addiction permeated my grandmother's house. It was a given that nobody talked about it, at least not in the presence of his children. But unspoken, it was palpable, like love or disgrace, the dual emotions wrapped in equal measure around my early memories.

A new member of the family appeared on the scene about this time, my other sister, Carol, although I had no idea where she came from. I have no memory of my mother's changing size. Before Carol arrived I was told I would soon have a little brother or sister and asked my preference. And after giving it some thought, I declared I would rather a motorcar.

I remember getting a little red tin pedal machine, a gift from Uncle Geoff.

After Carol was born, we shifted to a house in a new area of the city called Waverly, where the yard was still clay and the only plants were weeds. It looked like a building site, with off -cuts and broken roof tiles strewn around and drainage pipes exposed in crudely dug trenches.

I trawl the deep recesses of my memory for images or events connected to this new home and only catch a few, which suggests we weren't there long. If there is a cohesive element to these it would be that I am trying to help my mother, trying to please her, to be her ‘little man' as she had started to call me, as if I were already a diminutive substitute. I see myself in pressed shorts that had straps up over my shoulders walking next to her, while she, a beautiful woman immaculately dressed in a long, pleated skirt, white mohair twin-set and felt beret, restrains a pram with my baby sister aboard, which is threatening to accelerate down a steep road. I feel I am keeping her company and my company is desired and helpful. I offer to take charge of the pram, which she appreciates but declines, perhaps already with enough drama in her life. And there's another scene, with me again so eager to please, to be worthy of her love. I'm offering to put a new roll of toilet paper on the holder in the outdoor dunny. She asks if I know what to do but doesn't stay to oversee, impressed by my show of confidence, my slow, thoughtful nod. Such a clever child! She leaves me to my own devices, returning some time later to find the roll unravelled around the back yard and me at the holder struggling to wind the paper on.

Then my father appeared on the scene, my first solid recollection of him, accompanied by a wary sensation, a feeling that it was prudent to avoid intimacy or any sign of affection. I was struck by how handsome he was, unlike Uncle Geoff, and how vivid and unnatural his blue eyes were, eyes I was too scared to look at for long.

I can't remember any hugs and certainly no kisses.

But I have one unshakeable memory. He made me a billycart, presumably to supersede my pedal car. It was no ordinary billycart, either, for it had a reverse seat so I could take Jean along for the ride. Even though she was two years older, she was a girl, so I was the driver, the kind of privilege I gave little thought to as I was growing up. Our new place was at the top of a hilly street. He helped us aboard and patted my head and shouted, “Go, young fella!” and gave me a terrific shove to launch us. On the descent my throat constricted, the skin on my face went taut, my vision blurred and velocity tears channelled towards my ears. Unfortunately, halfway down, Jean with her rear view shouted a warning of a looming car, and in a panic I jerked the steering rope to one side, which caused us to crash into a concrete gutter, bruising my sister badly, shocking us both, and smashing my wonderful gift beyond repair, or beyond my father's desire to repair it. This must have fatally damaged his burgeoning paternal spirit because, with the exception some years later of a leather satchel, a by-product of therapy, he never made me another thing.

I have other memories, authentic memories I'm sure, where we're back at my grandmother's with Denny gone again. Fatherhood, perhaps, is more than he can endure. My mother and grandmother are always cooking. My uncle sits in an armchair with a loud radio on a shelf above his head. But I like to be outside. I observe the stray cats in the lane, admiring their dexterity amongst the rubbish and their ability to disappear whenever I stealthily approach. I go to the park, a square with gigantic oak trees, at the end of the lane. Acorns are on the damp ground beneath the leafy canopy, their polished hue and rattle fascinating me, as I gather them into neat piles, with a feeling of earthly affinity.

The lane was cobbled with the same metallic stones as the walled embankment where the street began its descent towards the centre of town. On top of the wall the neighbourhood kids would muck around, which is where I met dark-haired, dark-eyed Louise, the baker's daughter, whose character to this day eludes me, who accepted the only proposal of marriage I've ever made, after she consulted with her parents. Sadly, the engagement was short-lived. No sooner had I started school, in a brown brick school near the show grounds, with its hoard of shouting, crying, bawling, hustling, cowering kids, than I was whisked away, away from school, away from Nanna's dingy retreat, away from the broad oak tree with its precious acorns, the awkward cobbled lane and sturdy stone wall, away from my dark-haired, dark-eyed fiancée whom I never laid eyes on again, who may still be waiting for all I know.