Out of Tune (15 page)

Of the failure to consult David’s music teacher, Madame Carrard, about David’s trip, Callaway says: “This was not my decision.
The Music Council of the university were the decision-makers, not myself.”

The way in which David’s return from London is portrayed in
Shine
is utterly false, and could even be called cruel. It is another key element in building up a ghastly, totally distorted picture
of my father and David’s relationship with him.

In
Shine,
the following two scenes occur straight after David’s collapse while playing the “Rach 3” (scene 131):

SCENE 132 INTERIOR. HOSPITAL WARD. DAYTIME

DAVID’s
glasses are put on a metal tray. Electrodes are placed on his temples. The ECT dial is turned up.
DAVID’s
fingers flutter as the current runs through his body and then they quiver to a stop. He lies there, staring into a void of
white light. The phone keeps ringing
.

Cut to close-up—the phone still ringing. A hand picks up the receiver.

MAN: Hello. (No response) Hello, who is this?

The accent strikes us—it is
PETER.
We are in:

SCENE 133 INTERIOR. HELFGOTT HOUSE. NIGHT

PETER: Hello?

DAVID: Hello, Daddy?

SCENE 134 INTERIOR. PHONE BOOTH. DAY

DAVID,
hair cut short, pale and gaunt, clutches his bag
.

DAVID: Daddy? I’m back.

SCENE 135 RESUME—
Peter, numb. He listens in silence, then hangs up slowly. New angle seen through the window:
PETER
stands there, stunned. He pulls the blind down. Fade to black
.

In the next scene we are back in what the screenplay describes as “the morning sun” in the psychiatric hospital gardens. The
way
Shine
shows David being shunned by his family on his return to Perth is a lie from start to finish—beginning with the fact that
David did not receive ECT shock treatment at this time. Nor did we own a telephone. And, as at many other points in the film,
it is remarkable that my father is always shown in the dark, as though we did not own any lightbulbs at home, whereas phone
booths and even psychiatric hospitals are by comparison bathed in light.

Even more outrageous is what Gillian writes in
Love You to Bits
and Pieces:
“Peter Helfgott came to visit David during his first week in hospital… After being told that there was nothing physically
wrong with David, Peter never came to see him in the hospital again … Peter went home in a rage … He [found] a suitcase of
his son’s private possessions— forwarded by a London friend shortly after David had returned—and among these things Peter
found a little bundle of Katherine Susannah Pritchard’s
^*
letters.

David was discharged from the hospital on January 16, 1971. After this, my brother’s life took a decided turn for the better
as a wonderful woman entered into it.

O
n June 26, 1971, less than six months after he had been discharged from the psychiatric hospital, David again won the State
Final of the ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition. His performance of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” with
the West Australian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Tibor Paul, “electrified the capacity audience,” reported
the Perth
Sunday Times
the following morning. His victory was “a unanimous decision,” said the paper. The judges who had been enthralled by his
playing did not know that my brother had also been enraptured: his “electric” performance was sparked by his meeting a few
months earlier with the woman who, two weeks later, on July 10, would become his wife. David knew that his startlingly swift
rehabilitation was largely due to one person: Claire.

“I have never seen a man more in love with a woman than David was with Claire,” their friend and neighbor at the time, Allan
Macpherson, told me recently.

Though he was fairly upbeat when discharged from the hospital, five months in a psychiatric ward had inevitably taken a toll
on David. The improvement in his mood in the six months that followed was partly the result of the love and care that my parents
had given him, and also due to assistance from others—in particular, Cliff Harris, president of the Music Council and a Perth
City councilor. Harris organized a grant for David from the Perth mayor’s office, enabling him to be set up in a flat of his
own and provided with a piano. But above all David’s astonishing recovery was the result of his relationship with Claire.

David had been introduced to her by Carl Berent early in February 1971, about three weeks after he left the hospital. Both
Claire and Carl were members of the “Cultural Club,” a small local group of music and arts enthusiasts. My brother and I had
known Carl since childhood. Carl was a piano teacher who also played with several orchestras in Perth. He had been a friend
of my father and had given us a few piano lessons before we started with Frank Arndt. Carl could see instantly how much David
liked Claire, a widow several years older than David who was bringing up four young children. Carl wanted to help David, realizing
that he was somewhat disoriented after his discharge from the hospital. Knowing how warm and giving Claire was, he encouraged
her to get to know David better (as did Madame Carrard). After their first meeting, David told Carl how very much he wanted
to see the pretty, dark-haired woman again.

Claire told me: “David and I quickly struck up a friendship. David started to visit me often. He was a gentle person and we
shared a love of music and had a lot of fun together. After a while our friendship developed into a relationship. He wanted
to stay with me more and more, which I didn’t mind at all since he got on very well with my children. He would practice on
my piano for hours. I knew how difficult the previous few months had been for him and that he was still under medical treatment
and I wanted to do what I could to help.

“Within a short time of moving in, David began telling me how much he loved me and that he wanted to marry me. I didn’t take
him seriously at first—I didn’t really want to marry anyone, and in any case I was not entirely sure about his mental state.
But then David started going round telling everyone he was going to marry me, and I realized he was deadly serious.”

Before Claire decided whether to accept David’s proposal, she thought it a good idea to ask David’s doctor, Dr. Czillag, for
his opinion. Dr. Czillag headed the Sir Charles Gairdner Psychiatric Unit and, like both Claire and Madame Carrard, was a
Hungarian-born Jew. During the months before their marriage, as Claire had grown closer to David, she had come to know his
doctors well; indeed, they enlisted her help in ensuring that David took his medication and in monitoring his moods.

Dr. Czillag told Claire that he knew from David how much he loved her and that he believed that the stability of marriage
would be excellent for his wellbeing. He added that David had told him that he had always liked the company of older women
because they gave him more sympathy and understanding.

This was not the first time David had fallen for an older woman. While in London he had a relationship with a nurse fifteen
years his senior—she had even wanted to follow David back to Australia, but he was too distraught at the time to invite her.
Gillian, too, is sixteen years older. The attraction of the older woman probably stems from the fact that David likes and
needs a lot of looking after. Older women may express maternal feelings for him whereas younger ones may not have the necessary
patience or maturity.

“Dr. Czillag told me there was another pressing reason, too,” Claire added. “He said he was very worried about the harm that
interfering busybodies were continuing to cause David. He said he could not believe the audacity of people like Mrs. Luber-Smith,
Cliff and Rae Harris, and the conductor Georg Tintner. They were still trying to take control of David and push him toward
being a world-class concert pianist without any regard for the medical consequences.

“Dr. Czillag said the Harrises were trying to raise money to send David away again to study, this time to America, and an
announcement about this had again appeared in the paper. He stressed that David simply would not be able to handle the pressure
of going abroad. He needed rest and stability. Marriage, he said, would have the benefit of serving as a kind of protection
for David, since he could see that Claire had his best interests at heart. It’s the people who are interfering in David’s
life that are aggravating his condition, Dr. Czillag said.”

Claire told me that she could see for herself how these people were trying to influence and manipulate David against his family,
even after he had returned from London. “They were trying to persuade him that it was they who wanted what was best for him,’
she said, adding, “Peter was a bit of a softie and could not stand up to these people. His manner was too gentle for a confrontation.”

David’s other doctor, Dr. Matthews, was equally angry with the people interfering in David’s life, and he, too, stressed the
need for love and stability. Claire told me: “Of course I said yes out of love, but it reassured me that his doctors thought
it was a good idea. They also led me to believe that David’s illness could be controlled and that further hospitalization
would not be necessary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen David look happier than when I said ‘yes.’”

Mrs. Luber-Smith’s attitude was very different. “David’s decision to marry was foolish,” she said. “I had nothing to do with
David after that. I was so upset that he had left the Harrises after all they had done for him, I just couldn’t get involved
any further.”

Claire and David married in Brisbane Street Synagogue. It was an orthodox service conducted by Rabbi Shalom Coleman. “David
and I discussed it and we both decided we wanted a traditional Jewish wedding, albeit a simple and quiet one,” said Claire.

Claire had been married before, in 1952 to a fellow Hungarian Jew whom she had met in Perth. But her husband had died of cancer
in 1960, leaving her with four small children, who she struggled to bring up on her own. Claire, a cooking teacher by profession,
was born in Budapest to a middle-class professional family. Her father had been a textile designer and her mother a schoolteacher.

Her life had included the worst that “humanity” has to offer. Deported as a child by the Germans and their fascist Hungarian
allies to the infamous concentration camp at Dachau for the “crime” of being Jewish, she had miraculously survived and emigrated
to Australia in 1952.

When American forces entered Dachau on April 29, 1945, what they found—skeletal tortured bodies mangled together, piled naked
on top of one another, wriggling and squirming half alive, half dead—was so horrific that, according to a leading Holocaust
historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, photographs taken that day have never been published.

“I was liberated by the Americans in May 1945 at the end of the war, in Schwandorf forest,” Claire told me, still trembling
at the memory. “As the Allies advanced, the Germans had emptied some of the camps, including Dachau. Though they knew the
war was lost, they still planned to kill us. Those of us still alive were forced to march to the nearby forest, where it would
be easier to bury and hide our bodies. Many thousands of us were gathered there—not just from Dachau but from other camps,
too. We had to dig a huge mass grave. The killing went on all night. But then the SS heard the approach of tanks from far
away, and fled. When the tanks arrived, American soldiers jumped out and hugged and kissed us children. We were petrified,
starving, and itching, because we were covered in lice. A black American soldier took me in his arms and started crying.”

Claire, who was fourteen at the time of the liberation, was left with no parents, aunts, or grandparents, and was subsequently
looked after by an American Jewish organization. She went to a school for Jewish orphans run by the Americans in Germany.
(At the time, the British were still using all means necessary to prevent Jewish Holocaust survivor children from entering
Palestine.) “Eventually I chose to go to Australia. I imagined it to be a place with no guns, no war,” Claire told me. “The
United Nations relief agency arranged my flight.” (Though Australia, like most countries, was very restrictive in the number
of Jews it agreed to admit immediately before the war, it was much more generous in allowing Jewish survivors to move there
after the war, as part of its enlarged immigrant intake from all over Europe.)

At the time of David and Claire’s wedding, which happened at short notice, I was living in Melbourne and unfortunately wasn’t
able to take time off work to make the long journey back. We still didn’t own a phone, but my father had written immediately
to let me know the good news.

I returned to Perth the following month, and, of course, I couldn’t wait to meet Claire. I had heard so many good things about
her, and I knew she had had a wonderful influence on David. Claire and I quickly became friends, a friendship that has lasted
to this day. I regard her and her children as extended family. I have always admired her, not just for her warmth, courage,
and sincerity, but for her commitment to David—especially considering how difficult life with him could sometimes be. His
health went through frequent bad patches, and she would update me, his concerned older sister, on his condition.