Working Class Boy (16 page)

It seemed that the Child Welfare Agency had approached my mum and told her we were going to be taken as wards of the state unless she could provide a safe home for us. So she must have been checking up on us.

Mum told us later that she had been sitting in a work friend's house, crying about the situation, when Reg Barnes walked in and asked, ‘What's the trouble, love?' He called everybody ‘love'. His mum and dad did the same.

She told him her story. ‘I need to find mysel' a husband and then I need to find a home for me and ma six kids. And I need tae dae it quick or they'll put the kids in a home.'

‘Why did you leave them?'

‘I had tae run away because ma husband was a bad drunk and now they're being neglected by their father.'

‘No worries love,' he said, just like that. ‘I'll marry you.'

‘Why wid ye do that?' she asked him.

‘Someone has to save those poor kids.'

He hadn't met us at this point but he didn't give it another thought. Somehow he instinctively knew we needed him and came to our rescue. Until then, we were told, he was going to become a priest. Mum told us he had given up all sorts of things including some sort of religious calling just to look after us. But Mum was always trying to make us feel guilty about something.

Reg worked hard all his life. He was a clerk at the Kelvinator factory in Keswick near Port Adelaide. His big brother was one
of the bosses at Kelvinator and Reg seemed a little bit sad that he had not climbed the same ladder to success. He had been stuck as a clerk for a long time and he could see no signs of a promotion coming in the near future. But he never complained. He just got up every morning and went to his job, day after day. He started losing sleep when we came along. He wasn't used to being a father and he suddenly had to spend all night nursing sick children with colds and fevers. Or waking up at three in the morning to comfort me when I had nightmares. I used to wake up screaming and crying. But he did it every night he was needed.

‘I'm here, Jim. Just shut your eyes and go back to sleep.'

‘But I'm scared.'

‘Nothing to be scared of anymore, lad. I'm right here with you. Now go back to sleep.'

I'd drift off, knowing he was sitting in the room with me.

I'd see him leaving for work on many a morning, bleary-eyed and yawning. He went to work every day whether he had slept or not. Then he would get home from work to find that Mum had found a million new things for him to fix around the house. He didn't get a lot of rest after we arrived.

One minute he was alone in life without a worry, the next he was married to a mad Scottish woman and had six juvenile delinquent kids. How and why he did this has always amazed me. He didn't think about himself. This was truly an act of pure, selfless love. He was a saint. I quickly grew to love him and respect him. He was a good man.

Reg, as he said we were to call him, was actually six foot six and a half inches tall. He was a very gentle man who seemed to care about my mum and even though he'd just met us, he seemed to care for us too. He didn't drink and he wanted to spend time with us. I think he even enjoyed being with us, which was very
strange for us. Even our parents didn't seem to spend time with us unless they had to.

It was a little strange having an adult in our lives we called by his first name. ‘Reg' always sounded very Australian and odd to us too. People from Glasgow weren't called Reginald. They were Jimmy or Bobby, not Reg. But after living with Reg for a short while we felt he was so much more than just Mum's new partner. He cared about us, he looked after us, he loved us. Slowly, over a few months, we drifted from calling him Reg to calling him Dad. It happened by accident at first.

‘Here's your breakfast, son. Now sit down and eat.'

‘Thanks Dad, er, Reg, er, thanks.'

‘You're welcome. You can call me what you like. Jim will always be your dad. I'm not trying to replace him, son, but I'm here for you if you need me.'

‘Thanks Reg, er, Dad, er, thanks.'

He became our dad. He acted like a dad should. He was a good role model. He cared, but he was tough when he had to be. Not really tough but as tough as he could be.

He rode a motor scooter and took me for rides down through Port Adelaide and showed me where he grew up. He shared his life with me from day one. Whatever he knew or had he wanted to share it with me.

What was going on? No one had been like this in my life before. I could tell he hadn't expected to be doing this in his life either but he did it anyway and eventually we both learned to relax and enjoy each other's company. We had fun together. He probably did this with all the kids but I felt different; he made me feel special. And not like my dad did – taking me out with him because Mum made him. He took me out because he wanted to know about me. This was different.

Reg and Mum tried to make us feel safe and warm and wanted, even though we could tell it wasn't always easy for them.
Dinner was always on the table at six o'clock and Reg would always go to work and would always come home with his wages. We felt like we were living in a television show.

All us kids went from being nervous wrecks to being almost relaxed. Linda settled down and for a time she was as happy as I was. We all felt safe with Reg as far as I could see. Mum still had a bad temper but she'd always had a bad temper so nothing had changed there really.

We were safe and I could finally sleep at night. But I was still scared of everything and hated being in the dark. One day, Reg went to his mum's house and came back with a light in the shape of a lighthouse. I thought it was beautiful. He brought it into my room and said to me that when he was young he was afraid of the dark and his dad had bought this for him. He said the lighthouse made it safe for ships sailing in the dark in wild seas and this one he was giving me would make it safe for me in my dreams, no matter how wild they got. It worked, but I liked to sleep with it on most nights, sometimes because I was scared, and sometimes because it reminded me that Reg was there to look after me.

John was the only one of us who was not happy about Reg coming into our lives and he made sure we all knew about it. He would insult Reg and Mum to their faces and behind their backs. He refused to do anything they said and tried his best to disrupt our lives whenever he could. John wanted us all to be back together with Mum and Dad and be happy but I think he knew that could never happen.

Dad had always been John's hero and John had always been my dad's number one son. John worshipped Dad and the ground he walked on. None of us could say a bad word about him, no one could, unless they wanted to fight John. As much as Dad could do no wrong, it seemed Reg could do no right in John's
eyes. When we moved in with Reg, John went and lived with my dad not far from us in Semaphore.

They shared a little rundown one-bedroom flat that wasn't really fit for a dog. The flat was a hovel and Dad was out of control. I didn't spend much time with them at this apartment – it was cold and dirty and I would always want to leave as soon as I could. I didn't want to go back to the horror story of a life that we had been living before. Dad knew it. When I say Dad was out of control I mean he was falling apart. He was depressed and drinking huge amounts of booze and hardly eating. But John stayed right by his side, caring for him and cleaning up after he'd passed out. John loved him so much and it was killing him to watch Dad descend to new lows. But it would all change for the two of them very soon.

Dad used to bring John to see us every couple of days and leave him with us for a few hours. John would tell us, ‘Things are great now. Dad and me are livin' the dream. No one to answer to. We do whatever we want.' None of us really believed him though. He was looking skinny and pale and he always seemed a bit sick. We were worried about him.

‘Dad and me are best mates.' We believed him when he said that. We knew how much they loved each other. But he wasn't grown up enough to help Dad sort out his life. Dad talked him into staying with us for a few days while he found out about a job. I was out on the front lawn when Dad and John pulled up in a cab.

‘See you later, Dad,' he shouted as he jumped out of the cab, as happy as could be. He walked across the grass towards me. Next thing John turned quickly around to the cab as it drove away. I could see Dad crying in the back seat, looking at John as he left. John broke down; he knew he wouldn't see his dad again and he ran down the road after the cab but it was gone.

We didn't see Dad for about fourteen years after that and that really took its toll on John. I don't think he has ever recovered.
He had to stay with us and he made life as miserable as he could for Mum and Reg. He wouldn't go to school and he wouldn't get a job, he spent his life making their lives a living hell. Of course that had a profound effect on the rest of us kids too. Our perfect new life started to unravel and slowly our hopes drained away.

Reg and Mum tried to make John lift his game and get a job but he fought them every step of the way. Mum would get him out of bed whenever she could.

‘Right, up ye get. If you're gonnae stay wi' us you're gonnae have tae learn tae carry yer weight,' Mum barked at him like a sergeant major one day, but John didn't respond to that kind of encouragement.

‘Come on, John lad. This is a family and we all need to do our bit to make things work. You've got to be a good example to your young brothers and sisters,' Reg pleaded, trying to appeal to John's sense of the right thing to do.

But John didn't have one. ‘Leave me alone. I'm tryin' tae get some sleep.'

‘If you don't get oot of that bed I'm gonnae fuckin' belt ye.' Mum would try, getting more extreme.

‘Yeah. I'm really scared now. Just fuck off and shut the door.'

‘Come on, John, do the right thing by your mum. She's trying really hard. Please, son.'

‘I'm not your son and if you don't like it I'll move out.'

Mum pushed him and badgered him until he appeared to give up.

‘Okay, shut the door and I'll get up and look for a job.'

‘Good boy, I'll put the kettle on,' Reg said, thinking he had got through to him, and rushed off to make him breakfast before he left to go to work himself.

Mum went back to bed and continued shouting out orders to John. ‘I cannae hear ye. You'd better be up or you're gonnae get it.'

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm up.'

John was still in bed but he had his foot out from under the covers, banging it on the floor, pretending he was walking around. This worked for a while until Mum caught on. Then she burst through the door with a bucket of water and threw it all over him. Unfortunately, we shared a room so this meant I was caught in the crossfire and ended up wet too. Then she walked back to her room, cursing and crying with frustration. John laughed, found a corner of the bed that was dry, curled up and went back to sleep. Reg went to work, disappointed in him, and John got out of bed after noon and went out to see his mates.

I didn't like the way he behaved but I took note of how he got to do whatever he wanted. I didn't start to act like him straight away but I got there eventually.

The time came for us to meet the rest of Reg's family and Mum started to get nervous. Things seemed to change overnight.

Mum always had an inferiority complex. She started saying, ‘They'll be toffs. They're gonnae look down on us. We're different tae them.'

She was sure that people only had to look at us and they would know we were no good. But we had to go to Reg's young brother Tom's twenty-first birthday party, no matter how weird Mum felt.

‘It's what families do, love,' Reg said as nicely as he could. ‘Well, they do in Australia anyway. Maybe it's different where you came from but here, we've got to support our families.'

I began to worry again. Worry it would all go wrong and we would end up back where we started. We didn't deserve a good life. We were losers, just like Mum feared, and we would end up in the gutter with the rest of the trash where we belonged.

Mum got more and more edgy as the party grew closer. She picked a few fights with Reg but he ignored her. When we were alone I asked him about it and he said, ‘Don't worry love, it's just like water off a duck's back to me. Your mum has had a tough life and gets a bit stressed sometimes. She doesn't mean to start fights.'

My dad would have killed her by this point so this was a whole new world to me. How could he be so patient? Not only that, he seemed to be trying to teach me about patience and how to be a good person too. Reg took the time to explain things. It was hard to take at first, but it got easier the longer we were together – until much later, when I stopped listening.

Reg had lived with his family at 74 Wellington Street in Alberton until he met my mum. The party was at his mum's house – the house he was born in and would later want to die in. So we got dressed up in our best new clothes that Reg and Mum had bought for us so we would look good when we met the family.

Mum told us, ‘Be on your best behaviour or I'll belt you. They're gonnae look doon their noses at us as soon as they meet us. So don't give them any excuses. And you John, don't you start any trouble, or else.' John was a bit of a hoodlum by this point.

Reg tried his best to reassure her that everything would be all right. But she was on guard and wasn't in a good frame of mind to go anywhere, never mind to meet the in-laws. We were worried that things would go wrong before we had even left the house. It was like she was willing something to happen. But off we went. I think things started to get strained between her and Reg on the way but we carried on regardless.

The family and the guests were an unusual group, especially to a bunch of kids from Elizabeth. We had not really socialised at all outside of our Scottish friends. Australians seemed to be a different thing altogether. Some of the men wore badly fitting suits that smelled of mothballs, like they'd been dragged out of
the cupboard that morning. I got the impression that these people didn't dress up so often. These were going-out clothes and they mustn't have gone out very much: the same clothes were dragged out for all special occasions, a twenty-first or a wedding or even a funeral. Others wore jeans with white shirts tucked quickly in and ties with loose knots that were tied too short. They weren't stylish at all. These people were not like Mum and Dad's old Scottish friends, who dressed up to go out on a Saturday night. They always wanted to look good, even when they got arrested.